How do I flip a surface orientation?

[goliveira]

In Max if I invert the normal of a polygon the face flips the orientation. Like I want to make a room from a box. I create a box then I flip the normals.

Yet, I don't understand what is the normal flipping in maya does.

If i invert the normals (I can see they are inverted) but the poly orientation stays the same.

How do I flip a surface?

tchau,
Gustavo.

[empleh]

What do you mean by orientation? Do you mean the order of the vertices? I am not familiar with max.

ww

[joojaa]

Select the faces in component mode a and choose flip normals. Note thet maya anctualy has normals for faces and or vertices a bit depending on the geometry!

[goliveira]

I just want to flip the surface normal, so that the backface of a poly becomes the front face. Like I said how do you make a room out of a box?

If I select the face go to edit polygons->normals->reverse and it doesn't do anything.

Does it make sense?

[goliveira]

Also, maya displays double sided poly's all the time. How can I turn this off?

[empleh]

Like Joojaa said, select the polygon and the go to Edit Polygons->normals->reverse.

In the panel, choose Shading->Backface Culling. That will change the display for you so that you only see the front of Polys.

[goliveira]

Ok, i see i needed to turn on the back face culling. But I still have a question that is driving me crazy.

I now have the backface turn on, so the poly's aren't double sided.

Yet, if make a plane and position my camera on the top and press the IPR render button (render the current frame) it renders the surface. But if I fly behind it doesn't. Regardless what is the orientation of the normals. If I flip I get the same result from the two views of the camera. It sounds like the IPR is ignoring the normal orientation.

Why?

[skullnation]

Go to disply>polygon components>normals to give yourself a graphic representation of the normals. Make sure you have your object selected before you do this.

[empleh]

The only thing that I see is that when you do an ipr render, the default light does not get deleted. Make sure that you have a light to illuminate the bottom of the plane.

ww

[joojaa]

yeah the render stats is set to two sided for that object (hich is the default for most users, not for me tough)