texturing the back of an object?

Support Basics & Interface
1

ok, so some of you helpful guys told me how to duplicate and mirror and object in the thread “Two easy noob questions about duplicating” However, the texture on one half of my mirrored shoes gets applied to the back of the mesh, so when I render it, one half is alpha unless I move the camera inside the shoe, looking out. Then I can see the texture on the opposite shoe from the inside.

how do I fix that?

2

In EDIT mode make sure all faces are selected. Hit CTRL+N (or chose Mesh >> Normals >> Recalculate Outside)

3

thanks. so if you make a one dimensional object, like a sock or shirt or any model that is not 3 dimensional, can it figure that out?

4

Yes, you can set surfaces to be “double sided”, but strictly speaking there is nothing in the real world which has only one side… even a sharp sword should have a slightly thick edge for the light to gleam off. There are no sharp edges either. While the default cube has a straight edge between two faces, if you are modeling a dice, you would want one face to curve slightly into the other along that edge. Even the “sharp” edges of a wooden table are slightly beveled if you go close enough.

I can think of three exceptions…

  1. When making purposely low poly models (e.g. in a game or as a background character in a scene)
  2. Animation where pages of a book are turning: making two sides to each page is kind of extreme when you can “get away” with texturing each side of a plane / grid.
  3. Particles are different from polys so the rules change.

Should you ever need to, with “show normals” it’s possible to pick and choose which way any face is pointing by hand.

5

show normals?

6

its in the more tools pane, top left courner. You’ll see N and a number, usually .1, that defines how long the normal will be drawn. below that is Show Normals and Show V Normal. Normals will draw from the center of the face, v normals from verti