Hi all, I am a noob a DDC tools (I'm a programmer) and I found a model of Link online and am having trouble making the model look good. I already posted a thread in the graphics subforum here and I got back the suggestion to look into smoothing groups. However, I believe I am doing the smoothing groups correctly and the model still looks horrible. Here is the model in 3ds max with the smoothing group off: http://img32.imageshack.us/i/meshrenderedinmaxnosmoo.png/ Here is the model in 3ds max with the smoothing group on: http://img180.imageshack.us/i/meshrenderedinmaxwithsm.png/ I am only try to fix his face at the moment and if I can fix his face, I will do the same thing to fix the rest of him. Thanks for any help!

You probably need to weld the verticies.

Try going into vertex mode, select all the vertecies and in the weld section press the selected button with a fairly small threshold value (the default of 0.1 usually works)

Then your smoothing groups should work better.

offhand - select it, clear all. Select 1 - use turbo smooth modifier (not nurbs) and see how that looks - if you need it smoother, set the iterations to 2 and it should look clean. Could try hitting the autosmooth button and see if that does anything for you too ;)

when you apply turbo smooth, make sure you check use smoothing groups so you get the correct division of clothing/skin.

If your worried this increases the poly count to high - you can bake that smooth mesh onto a slightly lower poly version - heres a link to the basic idea.

http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/3d-art/how-to-bake-a-flawless-normal-map-in-3ds-max/

Goodluck :)

You the man! It worked!

Link looks awesome now : )

http://img246.imageshack.us/i/linklookinggood.png/

Glad that did it for you :D