User Manual

Inspector
Control Tab
The options in the Control tab deal with repairing 3D geometry and then recomputing
normals/tangents.
Pre-Weld Position Vertices
Sometimes position vertices are duplicated in a geometry, even though they have the same
position, causing normals/tangents to be miscomputed. The results of pre-welding are thrown
away; they do not affect the output geometry’s position vertices.
Recompute
Controls when normals/tangents are recomputed.
 Always: The normals on the mesh are always recomputed.
 If Not Present: The normals on the mesh are recomputed only if they are not present.
 Never: The normals are never computed. This option is useful when animating.
Smoothing Angle
Adjacent faces with angles in degrees smaller than this value have their adjoining edges
smoothed across. A typical value one might choose for the Smoothing Angle is between 20
and 60 degrees. There is special case code for 0.0f and 360.0f (f stands for floating-point
value). When set to 0.0f, faceted normals are produced; this is useful for artistic effect.
Ignore Smooth Groups
If set to False, two faces that have different Smooth Groups are not smoothed across (e.g., the
faces of a cube or the top surfaces of a cylinder have different Smooth Groups). If you check
this On and set the smoothing angle large enough, the faces of a cube are smoothed across.
There is currently no way to visualize Smooth Groups within Fusion.
Flip Normals
Flipping of tangents can sometimes be confusing. Flip has an effect if the mesh has tangent
vectors. Most meshes in Fusion don’t have tangent vectors until they reach a Renderer 3D,
though. Also, when viewing tangent vectors in the viewers, the tangent vectors are created if
they don’t exist. The confusing thing is if you view a Cube 3D that has no tangent vectors and
press the FlipU/FlipV button, nothing happens. This is a result of there being no tangent vectors
to create, but later the GL renderer can create some (unflipped) tangent vectors.
Chapter – 80 3D Nodes 1703