Instance Object is black

[neoxcorex]

Hello,

I'm using Maya 2015. Using Polygons. When I duplicate half of any mesh like a cube, the instance object becomes black because the normals are reversed. 
1. Edit, Duplicate Special, Geometry type: Instance, Group under: Parent.
2. I try reversing the normals for the black object, but the half of the cube reverses to black since they are Instance objects.

How do I reverse the normals of an instance object without effecting the other half of the object?

Any help is appreciated. 

[TechToast]

Hi Neo

This looks like a new feature in Maya 2015 which shades back-facing polygons in black. I'm not sure if its intentional however as usually these features have an option to enable/disable them which I can't seem to find anywhere.

So although I don't know the proper solution to this yet (Only just installed Maya 2015) I do know that if you change your viewport renderer from "Viewport 2.0" to "Legacy High Quality Viewport" the problem goes away. This is a less-than-perfect solution however.

If anyone from Autodesk is able to provide a better answer/solution to this that'd be really helpful. It seems to me that this feature/bug, although potentially useful, does break a lot of other features in Maya (Like negative scales etc). Also since a lot of the rendering tools in Maya allow you to render back-faces, it is inconsistent and doesn't honour a lot of the rendering options like "Double Sided" for example.

Thanks

Mike

[TechToast · Accepted solution]

OK, so having done a little bit more research it turns out that this is actually an old viewport preference which defaults to being off in Maya 2015:

In your viewport menu simply go this this menu item:

Lighting > Two Sided Lighting

And the problem is fixed.

Thanks

Mike

[neoxcorex]

It worked! Big thanks Mike!

[pascallabillois23]

not sure if y'all are still around but you just saved my life in 2020. I was having the same problem. I'm a beginner. thank you

[ariley2T8ZWS]

Thank you, I was getting stressed out.