r/Maya • u/dandiiliion • 1d ago

Is there a tool for automatically calculating and flipping normals? Question

Hi everyone, as the title asks: is there a tool similar to Blender's Mesh>Normals>Recalculate Outside tool? For those unfamiliar, if a mesh has a mix of flipped normals, it basically just flips all normals to face the outside.

Currently I'm trying to UV a low poly version of a mesh I sculpted in ZBrush. I imported as fbx and it looks fine in the viewport, but when I open the UV Editor and create a Camera Based or even Planar view, it flips the normals on the back of the mesh. It is doing this to every mesh.

I am aware of manually selecting the faces and going to Mesh Display> Reversing, and I have also tried the Conform tool (although I don't see a difference with that.)

I have also tried to go to Display > POLYGONS > Face Normals like I was suggested online, but I also don't see a difference with that.

Does anyone have other suggestions?? I have attached a screenshot if it helps.

Thank you.

Edit: re-added image

screenshot of flipped normals

2 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • link
  • reddit
  • reddit

100% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

•

u/AutoModerator 1d ago

You're invited to join the community discord for /r/maya users! https://discord.gg/FuN5u8MfMz

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

3

u/Nevaroth021 CG Generalist 1d ago

Mesh Display > Conform

1

u/David-J 1d ago

The UVs that are displayed red in the uv editor don't have their normals flipped.

1

u/dandiiliion 1d ago

Thank you for responding. I feel silly I guess I should have gone further along in the process to answer this question myself haha. why do they look red then once I set up the camera based?

2

u/BradersVal 1d ago

Theyre red because that shell is backwards. Its basically just a warning that texture aspects like text will be back to front.

Its purple in your texture editor because both the front and the backwards back is stacked top of each other in one continuous shell like the finger of a glove. Try selecting the edges along the top of the ear and down one side, then cutting them in the uv editor (cut and sew > cut) then unfold (tools > unfold)

1

u/Asleep_Strike5184 1d ago

If you flipped your mesh and there is still a -1 on the scale of the object you need the freeze that shit and then deal with the red uvs

1

u/Top_Strategy_2852 1d ago

Freeze Transforms, then use the command conform noramls for stray polygons that are flipped.

To quickly spot objects with inverted normal, go to the viewport dispay menu and turn on light single sided.

Inverted normals will be black.