[Bf-gamedev] vertex normals editing

[Bastien Montagne]

Yes, I’m aware of this polycount's page. ;) And I think I now have a 
good overview of most use cases - the trickiest question currently is 
really how to add this to Blender in the best way (i.e. not too much 
intrusive over existing tools, we don't want to have to edit half of 
Blender's code base!, not too much complicated, and yet reasonably 
powerful and future-proof). I’m working on this, keeping in touch with 
the maintainers of these areas as well. ;)

On 08/10/2013 11:50, Michael Knubben wrote:
> Here are some more uses for that:
> http://wiki.polycount.net/VertexNormal
>
> Particularly for foliage, but there's also something called 'face 
> weighted normals', the effects of which can be achieved manually 
> (though tediously) but which a script can easily accomplish:
> http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=85809
>
> Bastien, do you feel you're familiar with the uses of this, or would 
> you like me to elaborate?
>
> http://flickr.com/photos/michaelknubben/
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 11:43 AM, Simon Broggi <simon.broggi at gmail.com 
> <mailto:simon.broggi at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     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 <mailto: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 <tel:%2B41%2077%20401%209115>
>>         http://simon.insert-coin.ch <http://simon.insert-coin.ch/>
>>
>>
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