selecting multiple vertex normals

Hi! I was really happy to see, that NVIL has the possibility to edit vertex normals. yay!
But at the moment you can only select one at a time and rotate it. If you want to edit a few more normals this gets really tiresome. Would it be possible to select and edit more than one normal at a time? If you make models for games you can conceal a lot of shading artefacts by editing the normals. I can remember that for plants we made all the normals point in the up-direction, so it created a more consistent look of the leaves. Another example: If you take a simple cube and bevel/chamfer the edges and then soften them, you get shading "errors" in the long and narrow faces you just created. It helps to select all the vertex normals of a large face and rotate them so they point in the direction of the face. You do that for all faces. As it is now with a mesh as simple as a beveled cube, you'd have to edit the 24 vertices individually (instead of 6 times, 4 at once).

I also noticed, that the edit fields to enter the rotation behave strangely. I can't zero one axis out. I never get accurate 0,0,90. Why is that?!
Thanks!

Done. The rotation input behaviour is improved.

I appreciate your work! I hope my suggestions will help you improve the usability of the software. So I played with normals again to see how it feels now. Being able to select multiple vertex normals makes life a little easier, but some things still need polishing, I think.

1. The selection process: I can select vertices and then go into the normals editing mode. At this point I still don't see the manipulator. I have to click on one vertex again to make it show (it actually even says so in the help text). If I rotate, all selected vertex normals rotate with it as expected. The extra step of clicking on one of the vertices feels counterintuitive. I would have expected to get the manipulator (rotation) as soon as I enter the tool and something is selected.
I would find it convenient if I could use the diffenet selection methods when inside the tool. As of now, I can only click/paint select vertex normals, not marquee select when the tool is activated. But it would be very useful to not have to leave the tool when making selections.

2. Manipulator: The manipulator doesn't respond to settings like world, object, screen orientation as well as to pivot positions.

3. direct input: Unfortunately the input behaviour in the manipulation window and manipulation input window still behave strangely. It looks like the the orientation inputs are balanced out in order to keep the vectors length constant or something like that. It very much reminds me of skinning a character where the total weight must always add up to 1, so you are constantly going back and forth between weights of different vertices, because with every input the weight of the other vertices change, unless you lock them.

For all those who may not quite understand my example of the beveled cube from before, or to have a look at the benefits and importance of editing normals, here is an example:

ya a set to face command like in maya would be great, where you can just select a face on the side of hte beveld cube, run the command and it sets the veretx normals in the 4 corners of the face, to the same as the face normal.

i do this all the time in maya to imporveing my normal bakes.

All done.

Hi IStonia,

When selecting a normal, there is no longer feedback(read-out) of its angular direction(orientation). So you can no longer set to a specific angle. Was that intentional, or is it broken?

Regards,

-Steve

Hi IStonia,

When selecting a normal, there is no longer feedback(read-out) of its angular direction(orientation). So you can no longer set to a specific angle. Was that intentional, or is it broken?

Regards,

-Steve

In the 'Manipulation' window, set the 'Orientation' to 'Selection'.

Ah, my mistake.

Thanks,

Regards,

-Steve

Nice! You even fixed some bugs while you were at it. Now when duplicating objects (that aren't in SubD mode) the normals of the duplicate are duplicated as well. When switching between base and SubD the normals are maintained (unless you change something of course). Thanks a lot!
Sometimes, selection and manipulator positioning still behaves a bit quirky, but it is uch better now, as is the numeric input!