Align Face to Vertex Normals

Rotates surfaces that are not oriented in the direction of the vertex Normals.

Align Vertex to Face Normals

Rotates the tag's Normals that are not oriented in the direction of the surface Normals.

Swap Normals

Rotates all surface Normals of all polygon objects of a selected hierarchy in the opposite direction. This is useful when importing scenes in which many objects that lie deep within hierarchies have Normals oriented in the wrong direction (due to differing coordinate systems).

There are basically 2 ways in which the tag can save or generate values:

1. You enter values manually using the appropriate tools (e.g. Paint Tool or Brush Selection - then Store Selection). Transfer must be set to Off for this.

2. Values can be generated by fields or other point-based tags of the same type. To do this, Transfer must be set to Fields or Property.

The three options in detail:

1. Off: In this mode, you can apply the values interactively using tools (see point 1 above). This only works if the tag-carrying object is not parametric. This is in contrast to the following two modes, where this is perfectly possible.

2. Fields: Fields can be used, among other things, to feed the following tags with values, colors, vectors (hereinafter simply referred to as "values"):

   • Point, Edge and Polygon Selection tags
   • Vertex maps and colors (for the latter, only the alpha channel is evaluated)
   • MoGraph Selection and Weighting tags
   • Normal tags
   From left to right: An identical Random Field in a Vertex Color tag, a Polygon Selection tag and a Normal tag.

   Select this option if you want the tag values to be controlled by fields. An additional "Fields" tab is then displayed. Any existing values are usually saved there in a Freeze Layer so that they are not lost.

   It should also be mentioned that all the tags mentioned above can be converted into each other using the Variable tag Field Layer.

3. Property Transfer: This option can be used to transfer the point values of similar tags of different objects. This works with the following tags:

   • Point, Edge and Polygon Selection tags
   • Vertex maps and colors (for the latter, only the alpha channel is evaluated)
   • Normal and UVW tags

   This is done in the same way as the already known Property Transfer (formerly "VAMP") functionality - with the same settings - except that here it is done "on-the-fly".

   Property Transfer of the left sphere to other objects. Polygon Selection Tag at the top (with restricted material), Vertex Color Tag at the bottom.

   If this option is selected, an additional Property Transfer tab is displayed, which shows the settings known from the Property Transfer (previously "VAMP").

Example Normal tag

Fields can also affect Vertex Normal tags. Fields make directions (i.e., vectors) available, as is described here for the Field Force. These vectors can be used as vertex normals. The reverse is also possible: Vertex Normal tags make vectors available at each object point that, for example, can be used in a Target or Force Field object.

You can define normal directions as force directions, for example, or vice-versa - render Field directions as Normal directions (whereby it is not quite so easy to achieve a useable shading).