This is an issue that has been following me for a while. Firstly, this geometry was not created in Blender, it was created in a few other programs (rhino, fusion 360) and then converted to .FBX to import into Blender. .FBX is the only way I’ve been able to get decent renders, for the same reasons I will get into below.
My issue is that, basically, all the faces on each object are not joined together. Even though they are part of the same object, the vertices and edges are not actually joined.
Normally, this wouldn’t be an issue, because I could just merge by distance. However, when I do that, it screws up the texturing/lighting/whatever. It doesn’t seem to be an issue with the face orientation either.
This is an issue I have whenever I import geometry from another program into Blender. It’s the same issue with OBJs, but for whatever reason .FBXs don’t seem to have the rendering issue.
Here’s some renderings I did quickly to show the issue. Here’s an unmerged render (what it should look like):
This problem seems to be geometry-based which is why I posted in the modeling support forum. I need to solve it because this file is extremely laggy and renders take much longer than they should, and I think these unmerged faces and extra vertices are probably part of the problem, since there is a lot of geometry in this file. Can you help me please?
But basically if your using smooth shading and you have sharp corners the program cant really calculate the normal of the object super well. People usually use autosmooth or as i mentioned the Edge Split modifier to help tell the program normal directions. The Edge Split modifier basically does as it says, it splits the edges apart in regards to light calculation, causing the normal to act like the ‘split’ faces are not connected. Despite of course, still being connected (Provided you don’t apply the modifier). The Modifier lets you control what edges are split based either or manually marking edges as ‘sharp’ (Indicated by a bright blue line on them), or being using Edge Angles.
On a another note ‘Remove Doubles’ is a handy feature that does the same thing give or take, as merge by distance, you can control the distance it will count allowing you to easily merged a bunch of vertices in one click, even if the vertices are all varying distances.
Ahh you see the answer to that question is quite easy…im a moron and gave you bad information. Im running a older version of Blender, the new UI is still unfamiliar to me as such i have not moved past 2.7 Blender to 2.8 yet. Now here is the thing, in 2.8 Remove Doubles was renamed to… you guess it, Merge by Distance, Its the same tool, just renamed. Sorry about that confusion, that is on me.
