How do you flip a face without changing the "split normals"?

[DylanD319]

I’m trying to use blender to flip the faces of my stylistic leaves to create a Duplicate-Flip effect without flipping the split normals already applied by Blender’s Normal Edit Modifier. This is all to give two faces to each plane of leaves and keep all the leaves’s shading based on the roundness of a sphere. (aka the stylistic effect)

Front Faces (after Normal Edit):

Back Faces (After Mesh > Normals > Flip):

I know this or an acquainted technique is possible because of this post: Trying to make "Stylized trees" correctly - #14 by AngryAero
However I think AngryAero left a year ago (based on his latest activity).

Does anyone know of a way to do this? Help would be greatly appreciated!

[DylanD319]

Figured it out finally!

For those who also needed this information (I spent 10 hours online and couldn’t find it), here is the rundown on how to do this:

Step 1: Select the face or faces you want to flip and click on Mesh > Normals > Flip

Step 2: In the bottom-left of the screen you should see a > Flip Normals Tab. Click on it and check the box Custom Normals Only.

Step 3: Click Mesh > Normals > Flip again but uncheck the Custom Normals Only.

What this’ll do is first flip the split/custom normals, then flip both the custom and face normals.

This is all you need to do, and it blows me away that no one has posted about this. I hope this helps!

[Ilucere]

you’re a very W person gonna be completely honest