Polygon Modeling

[rissac]

I have a model that I imported into Maya (OBJ) model. It's an airplane poly model. When I render I get hard edges along the wing and main body of the plane. How do I smooth out the model so when I render the plane it is nice and smooth. Is it a model fix or a render issue?

[segmoria]

This is probably an issue dealing with the angle of the face normals of your imported mesh.

You can either select the whole mesh and go "Edit Polygons > Normals > Soften / Harden" and adjust the angle option or if your model has many fine and complex details you might wanna try selecting groups of faces at a time and changing the angle of their normals with "Soften / Harden" (different groups of faces might need different normal angles to "distinguish" from each other).

[rissac]

That doesn't seem to work to well on this model. Do you have any other suggestions.

I've tried smoothing, spliting verts and it just doesn't work well. I still get a hard edge on the top wing. It's seems as if there's not enough verts.

Thanks.

[segmoria]

Well there is no much I can tell, unless you post some images showcasing the problem.

[rissac]

Ok, you'll see hard edges around the top of the wing and when it meet other objects. This is just the standeard maya render. I think model just doesn't have enough verts.

[drblacksnake]

normals probably are locked. try to unlock them, and only then apply normal smoothing.

[rissac]

Thanks, I'll try that.