[Bf-gamedev] vertex normals editing

[Simon Broggi]

Hi Bastien,

Great to hear that this topic is being worked over! Guess my approach was a
bit naive ;)

Tangent data editing: Perhaps this would be useful for anisotropic shading.
Lately I had some problems finding a way to create a direction texture for
a brushed metal shader. I ended up mixing gradients in different color
channels together, not the artist friendly way ;)
If tangent space was editable, this information could be stored in mesh
data, and a texture would only be needed for higher resolution, right? And
if we would find a nice way to edit it, this could be very handy. I'm not
sure how often this would be used by artists though. Certainly the normals
have higher priority.
Here's the shader I was using:
http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php?title=Anisotropic_Highlight_Shader

Greetings, Simon

On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 2:51 PM, Bastien Montagne <montagne29 at wanadoo.fr>wrote:

>  Hi Simon,
>
> I’m currently working over this topic - but it is not a trivial one, we
> have to be very careful with how we manages those custom normals… You can
> have a look at my current working doc,
> http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Mont29/Foundation/Split_Vertex_Normals:)
>
> Best regards,
> Bastien
>
>
> On 07/10/2013 10:12, Simon Broggi wrote:
>
> Hello everyone,
>
>  I've made a python script to edit vertex normals.
> https://github.com/simonbroggi/Blender-Smoothgroups
>
>  It lets the user assign some faces to a group. The normals connected to
> a group of faces are then smoothed individually.
>
>  The simplest application of this script is to create a beveled cube with
> correct vertex normals and a minimum amount of polygons. In this image, the
> cube on the right is makes use of the script
> http://simon.insert-coin.ch/blenderNormals.jpg
>
>  The script has some problems that make its use destroy workflow:
> -Every time the user enters edit mode the edited normals are lost.
>  -Modifiers recalculate the normals. It would be great to use the script
> in combination with the edge split modifier, as this is another convenient
> method to edit normals. Unfortunately the modifier ignores the normals and
> recalculates everything.
>
>  These problems could be solved by implementing something similar in the
> c code of blender. It would probably make sense to implement it as a
> modifier. This would be a valuable tool for game artists.
>
>  Greetings, Simon
>
>  Simon Broggi
> Aargauerstrasse 60 - 12
> 8048 Zürich
> +41 77 401 9115
> http://simon.insert-coin.ch
>
>
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