Warning: Invalid geometric normal

[MatthewRF]

I've been getting the following error in V-Ray for Maya:

"Warning: Invalid geometric normal (-7.04766e-13 -5.32332e-13 4.68964e-13) for "<unknown>"."

The scene is lit by three VRay_LightRect lights.
The geometry is exported from RealFlow, and loaded via Maya's RealFlow BIN loader.

I was able to resolve the problem by making sure all the lights were scaled uniformly (2 of the 3 lights were not scaled on the Z axis).

Maya 2011 x 64 SP1
Mac OS X 10.6.x
V-Ray for Maya 1.5 SP1

[vlado]

Can you post a scene that can help us reproduce the problem, or send one to vraymaya@chaosgroup.com so that we can fix it?

Best regards,
Vlado

[MatthewRF]

Vlado -

File size is 26 mb. Too big , got bounced by your rack26.chaosgroup.com (mail server)?

Let me know i you want it somewhere else.

[vlado]

Yeah, it will bounce back as an email. If it's not too much trouble, email us again and ask our support guys for ftp info to upload it.

Best regards,
Vlado

[MatthewRF]

No problemo. I'll upload it as soon as I have the FTP info.

[cgleo]

Warning: Invalid geometric normal for unknown

Has there been a solution to this warning? I have been getting this warning message in several scenes. One of the posts suggested cleaning up the geometry, which I have already checked. These scenes have animated characters and thought perhaps the deformed geometry may be causing these errors? Anyone else encountering these problems?

[vlado]

Nope; we tried to implement an automatic clean up process for the meshes, which failed miserably - it worked for some cases, but for others changed the mesh too much. The problems in the mesh might be really hard to notice (e.g. a doubled edge). A solution could be to smooth the meshes in Maya. In any case, if you get us an example mesh, we will tell you which part is causing problems.

Best regards,
Vlado