Blender Question inside out

[andylegate]

I just love it as I'm doing all sorts of advanced stuff here and then forget how to do something that's simple!

I need to turn something inside out. Or maybe it's right side in.........here let me explain:

Got a cave....great cave it is. My mesh however, I only want to texture the inside. I don't want any normals on the outside. Waste of resources, etc, etc.

So....I mean like with a plane I would just flip the normals. How do I make something that has normals on both the inside and outside, only have normal faces on the inside?

Anyone?

[greendragoon]

I thought by default the objects were single sided. But in order to turn it inside out, you need to flip the normals. I'm trying to remember this from memory. (I'm at work and away from blender.) You take the object into edit mode. Select all the faces. Under one of the menus is a normal submenu. There should be a reverse normals.

Hope I got it right or at least close.

[andylegate]

Nah, that's not it.

Hmmmmm.

Okay, I got it.

Let's say Jishin (a member of my team) makes an object in 3DSMax and exports it as a OBJ file.

Now I import it into Blender. But the mesh has both the outside and the inside as solid. I only want the inside to be solid faces. That way I can SEE inside the darn thing to edit things, textures, etc, etc. I thought there was a way to do that.

[andylegate]

duh, duh, I are a righter...duh....



Figured it out. Sheesh.

You have to have the object in Shaded mode after you make sure the normals are all pointing in.

I was keeping it in solid mode (as I haven't textured it yet) and that keeps making the outside appear solid.

don't worry, I learn one of these days.

[Owehn]

The only way I can see what you describe is if I'm in object mode, textured draw type (with the normals facing in).

[Nadnerb]

Select all the faces in edit mode. Press W. Select "flip normals".

You should never see one sided faces in any mode, except for "textured". Not Solid, Shaded, or uh... wireframe.. (doesn't make a whole lot of difference there though)

Edit: on closer reading, this is what you said.

[boblishman]

Andy...just chuck ANY existing material on it for the time being ...then change it later

[andylegate]

It's sorta like Legos.


You build a house out of 'em. But you want to put stuff IN the house too. So normally you'd just lift off the roof, right? Well in this case "lifting off the roof" would mess up some very critical alignments.

So I was looking at it like: great. Just great. I built a heavy duty concrete bunker for a nuclear reactor......but forgot to put the reactor in.

But see, Jishin made the first part of the cavern and I could see through the walls just fine with it. And then the first cavern I made, I could also see through the walls from the outside. But I've deleted that one, and I'm building a tunnel system right now (almost done with the meshing part), and that's when i realized, hey, I can't see IN it. What am I going to do?

But then I hit the view textured, and pop! All the sudden I could see through the walls from the outside again. I was like:

"Ooooooh.......I get it." while quickly looking around to see if anyone had witnessed such a noob mistake on my part. Yay! No one home but me!

Oh wait......I just blabbed it to everyone on the forum!

[boblishman]

Andy... just a heads up about vertex painting your tunnel/cave.

I had murders with Sonavio's cave and (new) tunnel trying to vertex paint it ...then I realised (a "DOH" moment)... the easiest way is to flip the normals so that you can paint the "outside" of the tunnel/cave ... then, when it's painted, flip them back again... otherwise it's a nightmare to do "inside-out"...

[D'Lanor]

It's sorta like Legos.


You build a house out of 'em. But you want to put stuff IN the house too. So normally you'd just lift off the roof, right? Well in this case "lifting off the roof" would mess up some very critical alignments.

Do you mean you align objects manually? I always open the Transform Properties window (shortkey N in 3D window). That is where I tweak coordinates. Same with scaling and rotation.

You can write down the coordinates of your object from the Transform Properties. Then move it out of the way and type them back in when you are done.