Normals not normal

[art3mis]

Can any uv, modelling experts have a look at my geometry in the attached and tell me if my Normals are 'ok'?
The geometry is an inverted pyramid shape hollowed out.

I should have a normal perpendicular to each face in my geometry which deosn't seem to be the case. I'f tried every setting on the Normal SOP and nothing seems to make a difference.

Also, when do you know if you should be applying normals to vertices, points or primitives?

[toadstorm]

That looks right for point normals for that particular shape.

Primitive normals don't really exist... you can't directly modify them with attributes like you'd think. They're more an indication of the vertex winding order per-primitive than anything else. If a primitive normal is facing the wrong way, you need to use a Reverse SOP, and then possibly invert your point or vertex normals. If you want to see primitive normals, it's a different button on the side toolbar (the one with the primitive with the normal sticking out of it).

Generally speaking, you want vertex normals if you have polygon geometry. Open polylines and points generally use point normals. It really depends on what you want to do with them (for example, using N as a force vector would generally be best done with point normals), but for any typical polygon model, vertex normals is the expectation... this is how you get control over the apparent "hardness" of edges. Otherwise your corners are all going to appear mushy because the renderer is going to interpret your point normals as perfectly averaged vertex normals. If you drop down a Normal SOP in vertex mode and play with the cusp angle, you'll get an idea of why you want to be able to control normals at the vertex level.

[art3mis]

Thanks Henry. Makes a lot more sense.