A question about seams and shading with bodygroups

[Alonguy]

OK, so I got a model I'm working on, and parts of it need to be swapped out for bodygrouped alternate parts... that must outright replace the old parts. But see... this would require me to make the part that must be swapped out (IE A hand) not actually be connected to the main mesh, creating a seam in the shading. Now, what I wanna know is, is there a way to keep my geometry in seperate parts with the edges meeting, but make it look like they're still connected? I think there might be a trick to doing this with normals, but I'm unsure...

I'm using Blender 2.72 for my modeling.
An example of what I mean by a "seam" (Even though this one was accidental because I forgot to merge after mirroring)
[url]http://i.gyazo.com/486c7ca0944c665d43472a2b395ad7dc.png[/url]
Notice the seam right at the ankle where two edges meet, but are not connected.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

[CaptainBigButt]

If the mesh is separate, the verts aren't welded and smoothing doesn't really meet up. Bodygroups aren't the best for exposed parts. You'll most likely have to live with it, hide it with a brace, or play with the shaders until it's not too noticable.

[Alonguy]

OK then.
So there's no way to say, manually edit the normal data to treat face A and face B like they're connected?

That kinda sucks.

I remember like, Skyrim's vanilla player models using object space normal maps to make seperated meshes appear seamless... but I don't think such a technique is supported by source by default. (Could try implementing it, but I have limited experience with HLSL.)

Anyways, thanks. I'll try my best to make it work some other way...

[CaptainBigButt]

There's three types of normal maps.

- Tangent space normal maps are the standard normal maps that are used generally everywhere.

- Object space normal maps are usually a lot higher quality when rendered in-game and can make a model look really smooth. They're not nearly as widely used, but they're used in a decent amount of modern games. These often have issues with deforming models.

- World space normal maps are almost never used at this moment. If I recall they can replicate a high poly model extremely closely if not perfectly, but manipulating the model (even with basic stuff such as rotating it) requires the map to be rebaked.

Tangent space is the only normal map supported by source excluding ssbump which isn't compatible with models.