Hi Michael,

I think this is a typical problem of perspective... ;-)
If I would ask Softimage to "fix" this, they would say something like: "How on earth can a 3D-Modelling Software have no way to flip surface normals" but this time targeted at MoI ;-)

User Normals are something I NEVER ever use in any other software, be it Lightwave, Cinema or XSI, with the latter being the most advanced. There is little need for this when you do normal polygon modelling. So from my (and propably Softimages) view, this is something rare and special.
I don't know how user normals are treated when you edit or deform the model, but this is a massive challenge to do right IMO as well.

So I guess it is me writing a script for XSI to invert the imported user normals for now.

But since this is a typical problem, especially when importing IGES files where normals are often completely wrong, a way to view and flip Normals in MoI is important.

Sorry, those bottles are under NDA, so I can't send them to you.
I "fixed" it by exporting them several times and grab the bottles with the correct normals from the different exports.

Cheers!

Thomas

Hi Tommy, I guess the difference is that MoI does not particularly have any operation within its own functioning that really depends on the normal direction right now.

However, XSI's rendering function does behave differently depending on the normal direction... So that makes a lot of sense for them to have a flip function as part of their toolbox. It would be nice if their flip function wouldn't discard this important model data though.


> There is little need for this when you do normal polygon modelling.

True, but it seems like rendering is a pretty big function of XSI as well... Isn't that what you are using it for in this case? For rendering CAD data having accurate vertex normals is a really significant thing.


> I don't know how user normals are treated when you edit or deform the
> model, but this is a massive challenge to do right IMO as well.

It is for a fully general edit like tweaking a single point. But for a full-object rigid body transformation like move, rotate, scale, mirror or flip, it is really easy.

At any rate, I do want to add the ability to flip inside MoI in the future it just won't be a part of version 1.0 .

- Michael

Michael, so far I found workable solutions and workarounds for all my problems with MoI thanks to your help, so all is well.
Your knowledge and help here on the forum are worth much more than some features, so please do as you see fit for your development.

Thank you so much!

Thomas

Hi Thomas, thanks! And I'm glad that you have been able to work around those problems.

It helps me a lot to hear about the problems here on the forum because that generally helps me figure out what to work on to make improvements, although sometimes it will take a little while before I can get it implemented.

So thanks very much for your feedback and for sharing your cool renderings too!

- Michael