Blender Addon: Foliage Normals

 Your trees look like broken glass. Here's why.

Foliage made of intersecting cards — tree canopies, bushes, grass clumps —

shades terribly by default: every card is lit as its own flat plane, so the

whole cluster flickers between bright and dark like shattered glass.

The industry fix is well known: **rewrite the vertex normals** so the whole

cluster receives light like one smooth volume. Game studios have done it for

years with tools like Normal Thief in 3ds Max. **Foliage Normals** brings the

complete workflow to Blender — and goes further.

### Three clicks from noise to smooth

1. **Make Hull Proxy** — builds a smooth convex hull around your foliage

   (wireframe display, auto-assigned as proxy)

2. **Transfer From Proxy** — samples smooth, barycentric-interpolated

   normals from the proxy surface onto every vertex

3. **Add Backface Fix** — inserts a backface compensation node group into

   your materials, so single-sided cards stay lit from both sides

Prefer a simpler approach? **Spherify Normals** points all normals outward

from a center in one click — object origin, bounds center, 3D cursor,

selected-vertices median, or any object (drop an Empty where you want the

light pivot).

### Features

- **Spherify** — radiate normals from a configurable center, with a Blend

  slider (spherical interpolation from the original normals)

- **Proxy Transfer (Normal Thief)** — nearest-surface sampling with smooth

  interpolated normals from any mesh: sphere, hull, or a custom sculpted

  shell; proxy modifiers are respected

- **One-click hull proxy** — convex hull of the whole selection, ready to use

- **Backface Fix** — one button makes your materials two-sided-aware; chains

  correctly after existing Normal Map setups, idempotent, and can create a

  starter material for objects without one

- **Lossless Backup / Restore** — original normals are stored in a mesh

  attribute that saves with your .blend; revert anytime

- **Production-ready details** — edit-mode "only selected vertices",

  multi-object batches with optional shared center, correct results under

  non-uniform scale, full undo + F9 redo panel

- **Fast** — NumPy-vectorized: ~120,000 vertices in under half a second

### Non-destructive to your geometry

Foliage Normals only writes custom split normals. Your topology, UVs,

weights and shape keys are untouched — and one click restores the original

normals from the built-in backup.

### Works with your export pipeline

Custom normals export with FBX/glTF as usual. In Unreal or Unity, pair them

with a two-sided foliage material (TwoSidedSign correction) — the manual

explains exactly how, with a ready-made Blender node reference.

### Compatibility

| Blender | Support |

|---------|---------|

| 4.2+    | Extension package (recommended) |

Verified on Blender 5.1. Ships with an automated test suite.

### What's in the box

- The add-on (Extension zip + legacy .py)

- Quick-start guide with the 3-click workflow

- Shader setup notes for Blender, Unreal and Unity

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## FAQ (paste into the marketplace FAQ section)

**Q: Some cards turn black after transferring — is that a bug?**

A: No — renderers flip shading normals on backfaces of single-sided cards.

Click **Add Backface Fix** on your material and check the result in Material

Preview or Rendered mode (Solid mode ignores materials by design).

**Q: Does it modify my mesh?**

A: Only custom split normals are written. Geometry, UVs and weights are

untouched, and Backup/Restore reverts normals losslessly.

**Q: Does it work with modifiers on the proxy?**

A: Yes — the transfer samples the evaluated proxy mesh, so Subdivision,

Shrinkwrap etc. are included.

**Q: Can I use it on just part of a mesh?**

A: Yes — in edit mode the operators default to "Only Selected Vertices".

**Q: Will the normals survive export to a game engine?**

A: Yes, custom normals export via FBX/glTF. Use a two-sided foliage shader

in-engine (see the included notes).