Bevel modifier leaves faceted edges

Question

I was following a tutorial wherein the instructor beveled an edge, and showed through the magic of rendering that you could keep your polygon count lower by letting the renderer do some magic.

So I made a cube and beveled all the edges. But the edges show facets that remain even when I render.

Here's what I am doing:

1. new -> general (cube is present)
2. verify object mode and select the cube
3. from the properties on the right, select Modifier -> add modifier -> Bevel
4. amount = .2
5. segments = 8
6. dropdown -> apply
7. object data properies (green triangle thing) -> normals
8. check auto-smooth

When I render this, the cube has faceted corners. My expectation was that they would be round. The wireframe shows them as "faceted".

Answer 1

You skipped a step. The Auto-Smooth option is kind of misnamed in my opinion, but the point is it’s subtractive. You need to set the cube object to smooth shading first, then check Auto-Smooth to make Blender not smooth over sharp corners.

However, if you’re just beveling a cube, you shouldn’t have any sharp corners, so I don’t think you’ll need that option.

You might want to use the Weighted Normals modifier though, which will help large faces not look curved when they’re supposed to look flat but have bevels around them.

Also, for some reason, for mesh custom split normals to work, object Smooth Shading and mesh Auto-Smooth both need to be turned on. Make a note for when you get to that.