Hi jason - re: n-gons, I have seen LightWave occasionally have problems with certain kinds of n-gons (they have to be triangulated internally in order to be displayed and if something goes wrong with the triangulation, triangles can kind of leak outside of the boundary), but when that happens it should be seen in the realtime view as well.

That's kind of odd to have an n-gon problem that only shows up at render time and not in the regular realtime display...

Maybe the triangulation step that you're doing removes the vertex normal map, and that has more to do with the change in the rendering than the n-gons?

Can you find the vertex normal map listed in some list of maps? Do you get the same kind of result if you delete that and still have n-gons?


At any rate, I have attached here a version of your file that has the duplicated surfaces removed, if that is of any use.

In some areas of the model there are some very tiny slivery pieces, that's probably one of the things causing joining problems with it.


But it sounds from your reply that you have a solution now that works, is that correct?

- Michael