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Surface Normals: |
Page 7
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In order to understand why some peoples vases look
transparent, we need to talk briefly about Surface Normals.
A 3D mesh is made up of Polygons. A Polygon is a surface that is created when 3 or more Verticies are joined together. Most polygons have 3 or 4 sides:
In order to save processing power, Max only creates a surface on one side of a polygon, as most of the time we only see the outer surface of an object. It decides which side of the polygon we should see by looking at which direction the Surface Normal is facing. Think of the Surface Normal as an arrow pointing out of each polygon:
So if the Surface Normals are facing the wrong way, we are actually only seeing the inside surface of the object, which is why it looks rather odd.
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In order to counteract this problem, we have the
option to Flip the Normals, i.e. make them face in
the other direction. So go back to your vase....
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