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Crease angle and normal mapping on transparent items


Madeliefste Oh
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It's a challenge to find the right crease angle for your items that depend on transparency. You cannot see in the uploader how the mesh will behave when you add some percentage of transparency to the object. The only thing you know is that it goes wrong when you use the default setting of 75 degrees. After some misfits I found an angle that is more or less acceptable, apart from some tiny distortions in the edge of the glass, there are no distortions anymore in the bigger parts. (Third glass in picture)

CreaseAngleFrustration.png

But next... when I apply a normal map to this good glass the distortions are back in their full glory.

Is there anyone who can explain why this is happening? What has the normal map to do with the crease angle of an object?

 

 

 

 

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Not sure about the normal maps, but the general effect looks like what we discussed in this thread. Try the solution I came up with there, using different materials. I don't think crease angle is a good way to do this. If you need sharp edges (which can solve the problem too), use the edge split modifier. (Auto-smooth doesn't get exported).

Looking at the top edge in the next-to-last of your pictures, it seems to me the effect is there, just not obvious with the particular angles. In that case the normal map might just be showing it up by making lots of different angles?

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I managed to get rid of the distortion.

CreaseAngle2.png

I first made preperations in Cinema 4D. First I triangulated the mesh, next I made 3 phong shading breaks.

Preparationc4d.png

But still it has to do with the crease angle, when I uploaded at 65 degrees I had still some distortions, but uploading at 60 degrees gave the result you see in the first picture.

 

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I guess the phong shading break is the equivalent of Blender's edge split. So it that makes sense. It worked in the case in the earlier thread too. The different materials method has the advantage that it doesn't produce sharp edges (doesn't interrupt the phong shading). If you set a crease angle, it will override the sharp/split edges in the model. I would recommend not using it at all. You have much better control using the facilities of your authoring software to control sharp edges. The creasing is off by default, but gets turned on as soon as you touch the crease angle spinner. Then you have to start over (reset or delete slm file) to turn it off again. I think its a complete pain, and I never use it.

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Yeah, the different materials method is also a proper method to use. I would probably use that when I made readymades for the consumersmarket. But I make full perms items for builders,and I like to keep it simple. Unless it has a function for the use of the object in SL to have several faces on the object, I avoid it. The more simple you make it, the more easy to understand. specially  for beginning builders who just start with using meshes.

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