Blender Tutorial: Custom Vertex Normals
Why Blender Stack Exchange recommends it
Blender Stack Exchange users link it when asked how to edit, smooth or customize normals, especially with the Data Transfer modifier.
Recommended by 4 people across 4 different months, 2015 to 2019.
What it is
A 12-minute Blender tutorial by Defaultsound on custom vertex normals. It shows how to use the Data Transfer modifier to copy normals from a beveled copy so hard-surface models shade smoothly without extra geometry, with links to related add-ons and a Polycount thread.
What people said
Recommends WannaKnow · 2015-12 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “How can I customize normal in this way?”
A simpler alternative to Elbrujodelatribu's answer is to use the Data Transfer modifier to transfer the custom normals from a beveled copy as explained in this tutorial: [this video]
Recommends PipTogo · 2017-04 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Cycles and custom/face weighted vertex normals”
Did you make any progress? I stumbled upon this method ( [this video] ) and I'm excited about it! Would be awesome to be able to render it with cycles! I'll try it with arnold and maybe vray next week. Do you know any plugins to speed-up this workflow? Best wishes Phil
Recommends Rumen Belev · 2017-06 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Is it possible to get automatic smooth edges with flat faces without adding geometry?”
I haven't seen mentioning of Data Transfer modifier anywhere else in this thread. Anyway, it seems that by exporting the object to FBX format and applying DT modifier seems to keep the normals. Here is a more detailed video showing the result of the export in Marmoset: [this video]
Recommends Ben · 2019-02 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “How to edit normal direction”
Are you trying to achieve something comparable to Custom Vertex Normals, like this guy demonstrates here: [this video]
Cites Violet-n-red · 2017-03 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Data Transfer modifier: can't get it to work”
trying to make slightly smoothed corners with Data Transfer, but i accomplish nothing besides making two faces look more flat than they should be. several tutorials show how to do it ( this one, for example [this video] ) and i think i've set everything correctly, including Adding Custom Split Data, but i still can't get the right result. here is .blend file [LINK] . and here's a screenshot of modifier settings: [LINK] extra info: i have latest stable version of Blender - 2.78c. tried some several years old plugins and they gave no results. also attempted to install blend4web's vertex normals editing tool, but i couldn't even see it in the plugins list. any help will be appreciated.