There’s hard edges on the saucer, which are supposed to be smooth. (The inner bit with the text and the outer ‘ring’, that is supposed to be smooth.) In the program which I actually made the meshes in, Wings 3D, I set that to be smooth, and it appears smooth in the editor there.
I’ve tried manually setting those specific edges to be smooth, and they’re still hard. Another thing I noticed is that there’s hard edges between all the segments that were made in the texture when I was originally UV mapping, such as on the saucer, and you can also see it on the bridge and on the bits on the side/edge of the saucer. For some reason, Blender’s thinking that the edges between the texture/UV segments should be hard, and I can’t get it to stop.
In the object mesh Geometry Data settings ensure you have deleted any custom split normal data
Ensure you have no edge split modifier
Ensure you have not set any edges as sharp
Ensure if you are using auto smooth that the settings are suitable for your model
No blend file supplied with your post so I assume you must be familiar enough with blender to check these things yourself
Sorry, I haven’t been using Blender for long, how do you get to the Geometry Data settings? The thing in the ‘Data: Object Data’ tab doesn’t do anything about edge split modifiers.
Oh. I was apparently using an older version of Blender, and that’s why. Facepalm Anyway, now I see what you’re talking about, but what I see is: ‘Add Custom Split Normals Data’. So it’s saying there isn’t any custom split normal data. But, I still don’t see anything on there about the edge split modifier and such. Is that not on that tab?
I did some googling and I see what you mean, I have no modifiers on at all and when I put autosmoothing on, nothing changed, and I have no sharp edges.
Applying object scale (ctrl+A -> scale) and then removing doubles (edit mode, select all, W -> remove doubles) gives the control back over the smooth shading on the geometry. Could then enable autosmooth with suitable angle and mark some edge loops as sharp.
Another way to make it look smooth without connecting the geometry is to adjust the normals. Easiest way is to use a model that has connected geometry and use data transfer modifier to transfer the normals back to the original geometry. Applying the modifier saves the normals as custom normals data.
However, there also seems to be that I can’t ‘override’ the auto smooth thing in some cases. In some cases I want some things, such as the bridge turbolift to be smooth, but at the setting of 30 degrees (Which makes all of the rest of the ship correct.), I can’t seem to make it smooth again. I can make edges sharp and override the auto smooth, but not make them smooth. Is there a way to do what I’m trying to do without having to disable auto smooth and manually harden/smooth every single edge on it?
