Understanding Normals in Blender

In this video, I will explain the basics of recalculating normals in Blender.
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[@MichaelHickman3D]

I’m glad you did a video on this, many people overlook the simplest parts of 3D. It’s nice to get clarification on.

[@RyanKingArt]

Thanks for the comment! I appreciate it. 😀

[@kooshypir]

THANK YOU!!! May the universe bless the parents that raised you

[@RyanKingArt]

Thank you very much! I have very loving and supportive parents! 😀

[@Robocat754]

I hate the kind of tutorial that click this or that without explaining why are we doing this. Your short explaination video is exactly what I need. Thank you!

[@RyanKingArt]

glad it was helpful!

[@businessstork3279]

Oh man I wish I found this video months ago, I've been struggling with blender's normals in unity for ages and everyone seems to dance around this subject. You explained it so simply and eloquently, thank you.

[@RyanKingArt]

glad it helped!

[@MRUStudios]

WOW! Lot's of great information! I didn't know about those methods for checking the correct orientation of normal maps! Thanks so much Ryan. I've learned so much from you about Blender! Your videos are always awesome! 😃

[@RyanKingArt]

Glad it was helpful! 😀

[@mobilelast1715]

Very good tips in both video and comments. Additionally, if you are exporting models to game engines etc, you should check face normals by enabling backface culling (Shading -> Backface culling) and making sure that everything still looks fine.

[@RyanKingArt]

Thanks for the info! 👍‍

[@CGcelestial]

This face orientation is incredibly useful!!! This will help with so many of my future projects.

[@RyanKingArt]

Glad it was helpful!

[@-----0-----]

Great hints, thank you!

[@RyanKingArt]

Thanks for watching!

[@aryanchikane103]

You are a great man providing tutorials for free which costs thousands of dollar on other website.

[@RyanKingArt]

Thanks!

[@JesseCotto]

Great normal video!

[@RyanKingArt]

glad you like it!

[@CoilFYZX]

LIFE SAVING VIDEO

[@RyanKingArt]

Thanks!

[@gerdsfargen6687]

Was just looking for this one. Modelled a ring, and it was from an old blender 2.68 video tute. As you might be aware, the interface menus and options layouts have come quite a long way since then and I couldnt find the right option to recalc normals in 3.0 the way the radio buttons were in 2.68. Maybe now I can make the ring look more solid by recalcing the normals correctly...thanks!

[@RyanKingArt]

Hope you find the video helpful! Yeah, just select all of the mesh in edit mode, and press Shift + N.

[@gerdsfargen6687]

@@RyanKingArt thats changed too I think. The old shortcut may have been alt+n.

[@AndreiGhenoiu]

Great tutorials! And thank you for showing this! What was an easy find in pre 3 series, now is a pain. Looks like the dropdown menu that gave the option to select the normals in edit mode got moved somewhere else in Blender 3.3 LTS? Any thoughts where?

[@RyanKingArt]

I'm pretty sure its still there in the viewport overlays dropdown.

[@blenderstuffs]

Amazing😍😍

[@RyanKingArt]

Thank you!

[@grisha.makarov]

thank you

[@RyanKingArt]

You're welcome

[@Ostnizdasht206]

VERY helpful. My models head was 90% red and the body was all blue.

[@RyanKingArt]

glad it helped!

[@Solarpunk-lifestyle]

My god that was so useful and clear. fucking good work dude. thanks very much.

[@RyanKingArt]

thanks for watching

[@RyanKingArt]

Second Comment 😁

[@MrCreeper5906]

Haha that's a rare sight to see! 😅

[@RyanKingArt]

@@MrCreeper5906 Lol 🙂

[@philipschroeder5427]

Hello, as always thank you for the descriptive video. And as always I have a question if I may. I would like to make an animation where I want a scene to appear as some plane surface moves down. The surface will be at the top of the viewport in the beginning and move downwards until it reaches the bottom in the end. Now I would like everything above the surface to be shown, everything below it not. My appraoch at the moment would be to activate backface culling, and then for every mesh in the scene have the normals point inwards when below the surface and outwards when above it. Now my question would be if you would know of a way to do that. I need to define which way the normals are oriented depending on some condition. Maybe somehow with a boolean modifier would be my first guess, but I have yet to find a way. Thank you for your help.

[@philipschroeder5427]

Ok, I found out that you can use Math nodes for conditionals. Now I would need to figure out if to use geometry nodes or shaders for setting the normals, I guess.

[@RyanKingArt]

Hmm, I've never done something like that before, so I can't think of any easy way to do that, off the top of my head. The only thing I can think of, is to make a plane a bright emission color, and then do some green screening to make the emission plane transparent, after you render the images. that way, whatever the plane is covering would be transparent.

[@philipschroeder5427]

@@RyanKingArt Thank you for your insight, off the top of my head I think both approaches have advantages and disadantages. For your approach if I have objects with larger faces, those faces could be partly shown and partly hidden, while in my approach a face can only either be shown completely or not. On the other hand I think the advantage of my approach is as far as I udnerstand, that with backface culling only the faces are rendered with normals in direction to the camera. So those faces with inwards normals would not be redered at all, saving quite a bit aof computing power. I will try out both. Thank you for the answer.

[@blenderlover4884]

thanks

[@RyanKingArt]

You're welcome!

[@lem3579]

Hey Ryan, So I have a bed frame mesh which I'll be using for my video game on Roblox and one of my testers pointed out how it seemed a bit too thin. So I applied the Solidify modifier to it in Blender to try raising the thickness up a bit but it ended up distorting the mesh a bit instead as if cutting it. I was wondering if you could have a look at the clip which I posted a thread on in the Roblox developer forums about this issue but it looks like my comments keep getting auto deleted due to the link, is there any other platform I may DM you the link to? Nobody has really replied to my thread and it's getting a bit frustrating!

[@RyanKingArt]

you can send me an email message by contacting me on my website contact page.

[@AstuteModding]

is it possible for both sides to use the outside type of normal?

[@RyanKingArt]

No, although you could add a solidify modifier to the object to give the faces thickness.

[@philipschroeder5427]

Happy new year, and right now again, I have another question if I may. So, I understood that the normal facing is calculated in Blender according to the indexing of the vertices of a face. As I remember it if the indexing is clockwise then the normal is facing outwards, if it is counterclockwise it is facing inwards. My question now is, if the indexing for a face is in clockwise order, and let's say I have a triangulated mesh, then adjacent faces share 2 nodes out of 3. Now how can one of those faces be turned outwards while another be turned inwards? When an ordering is already defined for 1 face then every edge of it is already set according to indexing in a specific direction. Does an adjacent face have its own indexing? If not the direction could not be changed on adjacent faces without influencing its neighbours. And as this effect would be transitive, I could either have all faces pointing outwards or all faces pointing inwards. And yet somehow I can have part of the faces turning outwars and part inwards. So how does that indexing work then? Thank you for your insight.

[@RyanKingArt]

You could select all of the faces that you want to go into the other direction, and then use the "Recalculate Normals" option. And if its still the wrong way, then checkmark the "Inside" Button, after you flip the normals.

[@sambabassesoumare1168]

[@RyanKingArt]

Thank you!

[@LifeHacker8]

We can also do F3 > flip normal.

[@RyanKingArt]

👍‍

[@mr.lunatic3157]

Ah normals.. 😁

[@RyanKingArt]

🙂

[@yashraj4044]

First comment

[@RyanKingArt]

Nice! First reply. 😀

[@yashraj4044]

Thank you

[@jacobfoster]

This guy took 4 minutes to say shift N. Appreciate the knowledge but i wanna know how to edit the normal direction of faces in blender not just the way they are facing

[@RyanKingArt]

sorry

[@sylvainhuard2133]

not happy

[@RyanKingArt]

sorry about that

[@Ramzi_talk]

Sir, finally I understand this topic. You're teaching style is amazing .❤❤

[@RyanKingArt]

Glad to hear that!

[@Ramzi_talk]

❤

[@RyanKingArt]

thanks!