Smooth shading issue

Support Lighting and Rendering
1

Hi guys!
I wasn’t sure where to put this thread, so feel free to move it!

I’m having trouble with the Smooth shading mode in object mode, It seems to be throwing unsightly shadows over my object for no apparent reason.

This is the model with flat shading:

Capture.PNG1009×698 92.4 KB

And here it is with smooth shading:

Capture2.PNG1005×699 137 KB

It shows up in my renders too, even if I texture it, which is a real problem.

Anyone know what’s going on?

Thanks,
EvilGenius:evilgrin:

2

Inconsistent face nornals.
In this order:

  • Remove any internal faces
  • Remove doubles
  • Select all vertices and recalculate normals (Ctrl+N)
3

Thanks, that fixed most of them!

4

To improve it further try using the edgesplit modifier

5

One other item for the list:

  • if a surface is supposed to be contiguous (all one piece) make sure there are no splits in that part of the model. Sometimes Remove Doubles doesn’t clean these up because the vertices aren’t close enough together for the default Merge Distance (see Tools on the right hand side of the 3D View). If you adjust the Merge Distance after clicking Remove Doubles, you can clean up more of the gaps this way. Keep an eye on your mesh, though. If you go too high with this value, the mesh starts to eat itself.