Is there a way to recalculate the smooth shading after a bevel or subdiv modifier? The only way I know to do this now is to apply the modifiers, but I want to maintain my editability of the base mesh. If you aren’t sure what I’m talking about, here are the steps to reproduce my issue:
Add a cube mesh
turn on Smooth Shading for the object
Apply a Bevel Modifier with 4 segments or more. This should be a small bevel. The default radius should work.
Render the result.
The result is that you end up with the entire flat faces of the mesh looking curved like they would have if you did not apply the bevel and it was trying to smooth out the original 90° angle.
This also happens on sharp edges, for instance if you selected the bottom face and set the edge sharpness to 1.0 and then applied a subdiv modifier.
Left is the default cube with smooth shading. Looks horrible, as Blender tries to smooth flat surfaces across right angles.
Right is the default cube with bevel modifier (not applied) and smooth shading. Looks OK to me.
But somehow this is not the result you want?
You want the horrible look of the left cube on the right one as well or…? Please clarify what you see and what you want to see. A screenshot or two might help…
It sounds like you’re not applying enough resolution in the subsurf and bevel modifiers.
If you want to keep the viewport fast, the subsurf modifier at least lets you use different settings for display and for rendering. Also, you can produce higher quality normals with curve beveling by going into editmode and insetting various segments.
