Flipped symbols render darker than normal.

[AlHanson]

In my rendering I have some detailed meshes that I've imported from a client and adapted to symbols and did some flipping/mirroring to ease the pain VectorWorks was feeling. However, when rendering, these flipped symbols render darker. It's happening in all render styles and is very apparent when done as a white model render. Anybody know what's causing this and how to avoid it? I'm sure I can fix this by going back and reworking some of the symbols, but that'll take more time that I'd like to avoid if possible. I'm using VW2013 SP5.

Edited November 27, 2013 by AlHanson

[PVA - Admin]

Could you post one of those symbols in a vwx file here please? We can take a look.

[AlHanson]

I've just added a file with a couple of the mesh symbols. In prepping this file I figured out exactly whats causing it- I have Mesh Smoothing with Crease Angle turned on in the document to smooth out some of the other mesh objects I have in this file like a car. I still don't quite understand why that would cause this to happen however. Turning the smoothing off does fix the problem but it makes for ugly blocky renderings on some of the non native VWX objects I had to import.

[Mitch Brooks]

Al, I looked at the file too. I found that if I duplicate one of the meshes in place, but rotate it, rather than mirror it, the darker rendering doesn't happen. I have no idea why this would be the case though.

Did you originally create the second mesh by mirroring it?

[Kevin McAllister]

Its related to how VW is seeing the normals for the mesh objects. The normals aren't reversed, per se, but tagged in some way. When I bring the mesh into C4D and remove the normals tag VW assigns to it the objects render properly. It may well be a bug.

Kevin