Technical Artist Benjamin Morgan Shares a Blend Normals Script That Can Help Blend Harsh Transitions Between Separate Meshes in Maya

With characters, the head and the body need to be separate for rigging reasons. Creating blend shapes for the head is a common practice, but can leave a harsh and unwanted transition between the head and the rest of the body. Technical Artist Benjamin Morgan has created a blend normals script for Maya that can aid in blending those harsh-looking lines.

“Often in production, the head and the body have to be separated for rigging reasons,” Benjamin says. “This script helps this process by blending the harsh transitions that can occur between separate meshes.” The script uses the Python API to detect vertex pairs on the border edges between two meshes. The Blend Normals script will then set each vertex pair to have the same vertex normal.

The script is available for free. Check out the Blend Normals Script here.