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Soften and smooth edges
Hide the edges between faces that meet at a shallow angle, so curved shapes read as one smooth surface, in ModelCraft and in exported files.
Written for ModelCraft 0.4. The same help is inside the app: press F1.
A curved shape in ModelCraft is made of flat faces. Soft edges between those faces are not drawn, and the faces they join are shaded as one smooth surface, so a 24-sided cylinder looks round.
When you pull a circle up with Push/pull, its sides are softened for you. For other shapes, soften by angle.
Soften by angle
- Select what to soften: faces and edges, or a group or component (all of its edges).
- In Entity info, type an angle in Soften up to, such as
20, and click Soften.
Every edge in the selection whose two faces turn by that angle or less becomes soft; edges with a sharper turn become hard. A 12-sided prism's sides turn by 30° and its rims by 90°, so 31 softens only the sides.
Harden all makes every edge in the selection hard again. Each is one undo step.
Things to know
- Only edges between exactly two faces are softened. Loose edges stay as they are.
- Smooth shading works across soft edges only: a face with no soft edge shades flat.
- Soft edges are kept in the ModelCraft file. glTF (.glb) and OBJ exports carry the smooth shading (a normal per corner), so other programs show the same surface. Collada and STL export flat faces.
- Soft edges are hidden in every face style, X-ray and Wireframe too. To see them, select the shape and click Harden all; undo brings the softening back.