Are You Confused About Normals In Blender Too?

If you like my horror game development process, you can support it on my Patreon page: / borodante
Support Ukraine:
razomforukrain... - Razom For Ukraine, donate for medical aid using PayPal etc.
help.unicef.or... - UNICEF, support children of Ukraine.
Music: Movement of Neurons - Brendon Moeller.mp3

[@BoroCG]

Wow, I didn't expect to get so much useful feedback in the comments, thank you all! So apparently there's a technical difference between Split and Mark Sharp, even though they both appear to do the same thing and mark edges the same color: I noticed a slight difference in angles of normals between the two. Also as you guys pointed out, Mark Sharp doesn't trigger Auto Smooth to bake its angle-based sharps into Custom Split Normals Data, the way Split does. Fascinating and so, so strange, still. Oh, and Blender 4.1 is coming soon with the Auto Smooth checkbox being removed! So hopefully it means there will be a clearer way to work with normals, without having to enable the "Auto" mode when you want to use "manual" custom normals.

[@cyrkielnetwork]

It's already changed in Blender 4.1. There's no auto smooth property anymore. Now it's a modifier or operation called Smooth by angle.

[@BoroCG]

Haha you're welcome! :D But seriously, one can never be sure about using the new enough version of Blender. I literally downloaded this latest build yesterday, but there's always a beta and an alpha

[@cyrkielnetwork]

@@BoroCG Nightly builds is where the fun begins

[@LacklusterFilms]

What a stupid change

[@gloriouslumi]

Blender has many ways to do many things. As the saying goes, "there's more than one way to skin a cat". While Splitting Normals works the same as Mark Sharp on a texture level, Mark Sharp works on the vertices themselves, and is more for exporting meshes into other programs that can read that file data. That way you can have sharp edges without a Normal Map.

[@BoroCG]

Hmmm I just checked, and it seems like you're right about a certain difference between the two commands lol. I can see in the "split normals view" there are some different angles on the normals between the Split command and the Mark Sharp command results. Damn :D

[@Phimue]

This is why when I just want edges marked as "sharp" to actually be sharp, I just enable Auto Smooth and set the threshold to 180 degrees. I never really use the "Custom Split Normals Data" unless I edit the normals directly for some specific effect.

[@Kratoseum]

This desperately needs an overall! Coming from 10 years of maya I now have been using blender professionally for a bit over a year and the transition has been pretty smooth exept for the way blender handles normals and UVs, I STILL get confused about this and lose time troubleshooting a convoluted system that in the end controls something as simple as 2 states for edges... Thank you for your attempt at clarifying this, it helped... a bit. Devs really need to take a look at this.

[@xpdatabase1197]

A better way to bake normals is to shrinkwrap your retopologized model over the detailed model with a multiresolution modifier on the retopo model. Add as much resolution to the multiresolution modifier as you can. Then apply the shrinkwrap, all the details will be transferred to multires modifier while still having the good topology and will also allow you to control the detail level. Then you can bake the normals from the multires higher detail levels on to the lower detail level. This method produces clean and artifact free normal maps.

[@JonasBuechnerArt]

i'm a graphics programmer and this seams like the most straight forward way of doing this. should have an extra option for non programmers

[@pixelmuncher]

It usually helps to have sharp edges along UV seams, since the interpolated normals can cause distortion when baking.

[@BoroCG]

Yeah, I guess it goes both ways - it's actually necessary to have seams on all sharp edges. Like, unwrapping a sharp cube would actually require 6 separate UV islands

[@scotdanielburns3931]

⁠@@BoroCGEvery hard edge has a UV seam but not all UV seams have a hard edge is a good general rule.

[@BoroCG]

Yeah that's what I thought

[@mendeleev_9H2PDsgXu7NmphCUEH]

FACT: blender do simulate doplers sound frequency shifting on mooving sound objects (you can know it only from c++ code)

[@BoroCG]

Whoa, that's cool

[@nikolaysikovoy8378]

Огромное спасибо!

[@CosmicComputer]

I love your videos dude! your project is so cool

[@BoroCG]

Thanks a ton!

[@HodStudioArt]

Looks nice.

[@ChippWalters]

I always enjoy your videos and always learn from them. I believe auto smooth is named correctly and functions as it should. It has been a long understood technique in shading back to the early phong and gouraud shading algorithms that you can shade based on a *breaking* angle, and that is what it does. Splitting edges and sharpening edges are two different things and are represented two different ways in the data model. One of the oft used purposes for custom normals is when importing from other software, especially solids modelers where they need to provide specific normal data to make sure models with poor topology work correctly. Keep up the good work!

[@IndigoBees]

You didn't really explain the confusing part, at least not to me. He's not having a problem with auto smooth shading based on a breaking angle. The confusing part is that making custom normals turns auto smooth on. And when you store the custom normals data, the angle by auto smooth gets grayed out and isn't used, but the check by auto smooth is still on. What's the word "auto" doing there in that situation? You say splitting edges and sharpening edges are two different things. Okay, but then why to have custom edges do you need to have auto smooth on?

[@BoroCG]

Yeah apparently there's actually a "hidden" difference between Mark Sharp and Split. And of course, I have no issue with Auto Smooth enabling the breaking angle for normals. My problem is, as @IndigoBees pointed out, that the same Auto Smooth box has to be checked for very much manually set custom normals. Which, on top of the very fragmented interface to work with normals, makes it even more confusing for an average user :D

[@BoroCG]

And, as @cyrkielnetwork pointed out, they'll actually remove the Auto Smooth checkbox in Blender 4.1, which is already available in some preview builds!

[@3polygons]

I still remember the problems to work with Blender in the past (many years ago), as I was coming from 3DS Studio Max, and used to smooth groups I believe even since the 3DS's MS DOS version, lol... But it ended adding first some "sort" of workflow (Blender not focused on game art then even a single bit, my critique was that I needed to break the mesh to generate sharp edges), but progressively adding more and more improvements and nuances to this matter. It's incredible what Blender has become, today.

[@darkalleywaystudio3975]

I think this area is a place Blender could improve. I just find the problem area and go down the list of normal functions until I get the desired look I'm looking for. Sometimes, there just isn't a way to fix after UV unwrapping, so I have paint the normals in Substance Painter. As when you mark a segment, it does the same as marking sharp. Also, I recommend just baking your high poly mesh to your low poly mesh in Substance painter combined with the fixes I talked about.

[@mrmunkee]

This video is confusing me a bit since I've never had issues getting normals how I want. Selecting to "split" edges is not the same as just marking sharp because if you just mark sharp it works fine and doesn't create custom split normals data. So I don't know why you'd use the split function when you can just use mark sharp. Sharp edges need auto smooth to work becuase "smooth" is just that, smooth without regard for anything else.

[@BoroCG]

Oh my gosh, thanks! Indeed mark sharp doesn't trigger auto smooth baking into custom normals. Also, as some pointed out, there is a barely noticeable difference between the two commands, as in one of them works straight with vertices, and I noticed a small difference in normals angles too. Sorry for making it more confusing lol

[@skatehansen]

the splitting is useful if you have beveled edges without a extra support edge before the flat part. Since you do not want to make the edge sharp, but you want to stop the smoothing from happening on the flat part

[@BoroCG]

Wait, are you sure? Because splitting actually makes the edge sharp, not sure if that's good for a bevel

[@ezioassassin2028]

Im not very verse in the ways of blender at all, but have you tried applying the weighted normals modifier before baking other normals on top? Maybe that will get a good result?

[@BoroCG]

I cover this at the end of the video: blender ignores custom normals and just projects using autosmooth with whatever angles are set in it, baking in compensation for sharp edges you don't even have on your model

[@nicolashf]

Love it

[@mantas3d]

Just tell me, how have you managed to stay sane after learning, testing normals in blender? 😂

[@Kruku666]

yeah ..when i moved form max i was totally ranged on blender it's super non intuitive sometimes XD one click is 3 clicks or 1 second action takes 5 seconds to do ;/ some wird workarounds etc but generally it's getting better from 2.78 when i started XD

[@mantas3d]

I experienced the same

[@tomcraft514]

First! Love you boro