Dark center after duplicate special

[Anonymous]

I'm basically brand new to Autodesk Maya 2013 and started working on my very first 3D model of a silly looking monster. I wanted both sides of my monster to be perfectly symmetrical so I decided to use Duplicate Special. I manually moved the other half over to connect and then used Mesh > Combine to connect the two halves. I'm not sure if it was immediately afterwards that I ended up with an uneven color tone right at that middle seam, but I ended up with that problem. Sorry, I worked in a hurry and thought that once I implemented texture, it would go away. I attached a picture to show the problem I'm having. The thing is.... when I add default textures, that middle area is still very dark and I don't know how to fix it.

Any help that solves this problem is MUCH appreciated! Thanks in advance.

[damaggio · Accepted solution]

Looks like a Normal issue, go to top menu bar look for "Normals" >Set normal angle> ...default is 30.

Sometimes is helpful to under Normals to "Unlock Normals" or Set To Face, that will harden the edges...then you can set the Normal angle again .

[damaggio]

Normals control how soft or hard an object will appear, sometimes also Normals could be flipped and then the entire model can appear black in the viewport, you then need to reverse the normals back.

Normals can also be visible by a green line sticking out to the positive side of mesh.......Display>Polygons>Face Normals.

Check this basic video....

http://vimeo.com/2165443