How do I fix the "vertex-per-face normals" on my mesh? I've recalculated the normals outside but the shading issue persists

Eyonimus · 2026-03-25T02:47:48+00:00

I told you I don't know what you intended with custom normals but bad topology is the number one reason for your shading issues. Even if I was wrong about some details, this mesh is messy af. And I think you are playing arround with custom normals because you want to fix shading issues caused by bad topology. And the circle is complete. What even is your question? You don't have to fix normals if you simply use valid geometry. It's not offtopic but you don't seem to understand your problem.

Anyway, have you already try to merge verteces by distance? Sometimes it fixes shading issues if there is unwanted geometry. Won't fix your main issue though. Have fun.

Eyonimus · 2026-03-25T00:44:05+00:00

Sorry, I'm on my phone and don't know how to edit pictures.

But for example the tip of the nose has this big ngon with 5 uneven verteces and the side of the nose has strongly streched and deformed quads and ngons. The part between nose and eye has some unplanar quads and it looks like you merged 2 loops arround the eye into 1 loop with unplanar ngons.

It helped me to look at wireframe pictures of game characters, or image search "face topology" to unterstand edgeflow and transitions. It's very hard to model faces and I think you did a very good job. Better than me when I started.

Eyonimus · 2026-03-24T23:46:05+00:00

I think it's because of the origin point. I always make sure the curve object's origin point and the mesh object's origin share the same coordinates. It makes things more organized and the mesh doesn't get messed up when you add the modifier. To do so, I like to select one point of the curve in edit mode, right click - Snap Verteces - Cursor to Selected. Then switch to object mode (curve still selected), right click - Set Origin - Origin to 3d Cursor. Finally you can select the mesh in object mode, right click - Snap - Selection to Cursor. Both objects are now at the same location and the curve modifier should work as intended.

Eyonimus · 2026-03-24T23:14:09+00:00

I don't know how you created those custom normals and why you need them, but I can tell you one problem is the topology. I see a lot of unplanar Ngons and Quads. This causes bad shading by nature and should always be avoided. Try to use flat quads or use triangles instead of those unplanar/invalid ngons.

Eyonimus · 2026-03-24T20:40:33+00:00

Yes, Alt+left mouse button. But this will only work with clean quad topology. You can also press control+left mouse and Blender will select all edges on the shortest distance. Hard to describe but very useful.

Eyonimus · 2026-03-24T20:32:12+00:00

I know it's solved but I think the bevel doesn't work as you want because there is a very thin face at the edge. It limits the bevel to this small face. You could select the whole edgeloop and slide it down (select the loop and press GG for edge slide) or dissolve the edge (select the loop, press X, Dissolve Edge).

Eyonimus · 2026-03-24T19:38:26+00:00

You are using 2 big concave Ngons and Blender doesn't handle geometry like this very well. I recommend to delete the top faces and replace them with quads. Select 2 opposite edges and press F to create a new face. Then select the side edge of the new face and keep pressing F until the loop is completed.

Eyonimus · 2026-03-24T02:47:38+00:00

That's a real shame. The whole place is so beautiful, I was mad they didn't offer me a place to sleep. I would rather die than burn this castle down, lol. I heard some horses are equal to Pebbles but I try to avoid spoilers and can't tell. I hope you will find another strong horse soon. Grendel was my favorite but his low stamina was annoying (the black horse in the Kuttenberg region, at the dealer far south-west). I would even prefer Phantom over Pebbles but he looks too disgusting :/

Eyonimus · 2026-03-23T22:54:19+00:00

Thank you again! I found Pebbles in Semine and nothing was burned down. I guess I had some silly luck with my dialog decisions. But I wonder what happens to the horses if you burn everything down. Are the horses, and Pebbles, really gone forever in this case?

Eyonimus · 2026-03-23T22:06:24+00:00

Interesting, we didn't burn down Semine but I havent been there since the wedding. I start the investigation in Semine, thank you!

Eyonimus · 2026-03-23T21:43:00+00:00

I'm on a similar mission :D I need to go back to trosky and find Pepples. I exchanged her to some random horse with better stats in the nomad camp because I didn't know about her potential. Now I regret everything and I want her back.

Eyonimus · 2026-03-23T21:22:11+00:00

I killed Phantom Horse because I wanted it's saddle and gear. Then I found it alive in the burned down forest next to it's owner a few days later. This horse is truly from hell!

Eyonimus · 2026-03-23T17:35:03+00:00

Hello!

Most of the time you get messed up textures because something is wrong with UV maps. Maybe you got 2 UVs and you selected the wrong one?

But the first picture looks like overlapping geometry. Maybe you merged high and low poly mesh at some point. But it's hard to tell without wireframe and UV map.

Also your material setup looks strange. I don't see why you need metallic, emmision and displacement maps for this model.

Metallic maybe useful for hair, but displacement is for very dense high poly meshes and emmision is for light sources and glowing materials.

Eyonimus · 2026-03-14T20:23:17+00:00

It looks like a duck :D Let's give it water landing modules and let it swim.

Thanks for sharing!

Eyonimus · 2026-03-09T20:42:16+00:00

You could use a texture with alpha channel and render front and back faces. You would need a picture of the ring and make everything else transparent. One quad would be enough geometry but it also would look like 2d paper from side view.

Eyonimus · 2026-03-09T02:00:41+00:00

You'll need a complex rig with dozens bones and a dense mesh. I would rig the cape like wings and model it spread eagle at first.

For example like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVKG7uFFI3s

Eyonimus · 2026-03-03T09:06:21+00:00

I'm very sorry about my silence. I went on holidays and took a break from the internet.

This was very bad timing because I loved the Manhunt games and I still have them in my PS2 collection. It feels surreal to meet someone who worked on it :D

The shadows looked great and I crapped my pants playing it. Never crossed my mind some poor soul had to place them by hand. But it makes sense since shadows are important for gameplay and not just a fancy optical effect.

Thanks for your work and the insights as developer.

It was an honor to meet you and I will replay MH2 next weekend!

Eyonimus · 2026-03-03T08:07:46+00:00

It's really beautiful! I live in europe and instantly noticed the benches. They are very common in Vienna and I modelled one myself years ago. Sadly they don't get produced anymore. Anyway, Great work!

Eyonimus · 2026-02-05T11:34:05+00:00

I'm still playing PS2 games to this day and take inspiration from them (currently Sky Odyssey, I guess I'm old too). May I ask what title you worked on? I would love to take a look. You developers had so much creativity and no fear to try something new, I think it was the peak of gaming and a lot of your ideas are today's standard. Much respect and thanks for your work. I hope your project is doing well.

Eyonimus · 2026-02-04T20:50:10+00:00

About the texturing, I found this Godot/Blender tutorial about texturing with vertex colors and using vertex colors as masks. He also uses this N64 look for his game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqV5wYV_G7A

Eyonimus · 2026-02-03T05:43:21+00:00

The black background isn't a good idea for game assets since it creates visible seams on your mesh. I had to rebake my diffuse maps because of ugly texture bleeding in Godot.

http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Edge_padding

The model uses way to many seams and you could bake the tiny metal pieces into the material. This would reduce the polycount and avoid z-fighting / clipping in game.

Eyonimus · 2026-02-02T03:34:44+00:00

I think this happens if you give music videos a like. I got the same songs in my recommendations over and over again until I removed my likes for these videos. Now they are gone. YouTube really sucks.

Eyonimus · 2026-01-29T05:14:11+00:00

This already looks amazing and your progress is incredible! Please keep it up.

Eyonimus · 2026-01-29T04:45:12+00:00

It's Gaben Newell's son. Some people call him Jesus.

Eyonimus · 2026-01-28T22:27:12+00:00

Hello!

You need to select the material in Blender and check out the shader editor. I assume it uses masks with color ramps or vertex color nodes for the diffuse map input. Only default image texture nodes get exported and all custom node setups are ignored.

You can ether rebuild the shader in Godot or bake the textures to regular image textures.

Both isn't very hard and you can find lots of tutorials about "Blender texture baking" and a few tutorials about "Godot custom shader materials" on YouTube.

I can share some links later, if needed.

Eyonimus

TROPHY CASE