Shade Flat or Smooth in Blender?

kuangdan11 · Jul 23, 2022

I am creating a mesh for a 141RE rail profile for a procedural track in Blender 3.2. Would it be best shade flat or smooth? Would shading the vertices smooth negatively impact performance?

whitepass · Jul 23, 2022

Yes, shade smooth then do an "edge split".

justinroth · Jul 29, 2022

whitepass said:
Yes, shade smooth then do an "edge split".

I've been using Blender for years and have never heard of "edge split". Is this to create a defined edge between smooth and flat shaded normals?

pcas1986 · Jul 29, 2022

justinroth said:
I've been using Blender for years and have never heard of "edge split". Is this to create a defined edge between smooth and flat shaded normals?

Its defined here: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/modifiers/generate/edge_split.html

The modifier does improve the look of 'smoothed' objects but often I have to tweak the angle. There is also the Auto Smooth mesh tag that does much the same thing but not always.

Shade Flat or Smooth in Blender?

kuangdan11

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justinroth

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pcas1986

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