‘Checkerboard’ Effect with Face Division

A couple more things:

-The triangulate can be done on only those faces that were dark (or perhaps were neighbors of dark faces). It doesn’t need to be done on the whole object.

-If you optimize (Optimize operation) after the triangulate you might find that you some of the triangles will turn back into quads and make texture mapping a little bit easier.

I look forward to seeing the result.

Hello. andnbsp;I sent an e-mail VERY early this morning, and i was told to post this problem here. andnbsp;So, here it is, albeit a little more coherent this time.
I am working on a car for MSTS and am now on my third complete rebuild of it. andnbsp;Problems with MSTS blurring textures at very short distances forced me to do this. andnbsp;Basically, i was trying to get the smooth side of the body broken down into multiple faces to allow more andquot;freedomandquot; in texture mapping. andnbsp;I used the Divide Selection function to divide multiple faces at one time, as i had already learned that dividing them individually would result in the second one dividing into multiple triangles radiating from a central point in the original face. andnbsp;The division of mutliple faces simultaneously resulted in what i wanted – many more rectangular faces. andnbsp;However, this resulted in some of the ADJACENT faces turning very dark. andnbsp;Although this gets somewhat smoothed (not enough, however) when exported to the game as is, once i merge another object onto the carbody it will no longer smooth the dark areas, resulting in large rectangles of very dark textures. andnbsp;Again, it is not the faces involved in the division, it is the adjacent faces that are darkening. andnbsp;My question: is it supposed to do this? andnbsp;If it’s not, how can i fix it? andnbsp;If it is, what causes this so i can work around it?
Thanks!

Hi,

It is kind of hard to explain this. But here goes…

The divide tool behaves slighly differently with four sided faces (quadrilaterals) than it does with triangles and greater than 4 sided faces. This is a requirement unfortunatley. If you have two triangles next to each other you can select the edge between them and andquot;trimandquot; the edge away to make a quad (4 sided face).

The darkness you see is because of the andquot;normalsandquot; of the face being not quite right. This is information the renderer uses to shade the face. What you are getting when you divide faces is faces with colinear edges. 3D renderers (like Direct3d) don’t like this very much. If you divide a face without distorting it you could well get very dark sections, even on neighbouring faces since they are affected also since they share edges.

Applying a andquot;Creaseandquot; operation may help. But as you have noticed this andquot;darkeningandquot; can happen with all 3D programs including MSTS. Another possibility is that you could try trimming away unused points or edges (Trim operation). Triangulating some faces might help also (Triangulate operation).

Richard
Amabilis Software

Richard,

Thanks for the help. andnbsp;The crease operation had some interesting results. andnbsp;Though it did not eliminate the problem, it DID have the effect of making the darkened areas look almost like a neat weathering effect. andnbsp;Almost… andnbsp;It also smoothed out the roofline where MSTS adds the shadowing, making it look much more realistic. andnbsp;The Triangulate operation, on the other hand, completely eliminated the darkening of the faces. andnbsp;Though it will be a bit more difficult to map the textures, i can live with that. andnbsp;After all, it is the end result that counts!
Thanks again for the quick response, i will have to upload some pictures of the car when it is complete!