Cutting holes on curved surfaces—like a car hood or any smooth automotive panel—almost always creates shading artifacts: pinches, broken reflections, harsh highlights, and distorted gradients.These issues don’t come from bad geometry, but from normals losing their natural flow when an opening interrupts the curvature.
The most effective way to fix this is using Blender’s Data Transfer modifier. By duplicating the clean surface before creating any holes and transferring its normals to the edited mesh, you can restore perfect shading without rebuilding topology.
Essential workflow:
1. Duplicate the mesh before cutting
Keep one version untouched—this clean duplicate will provide perfect normals.
2. Create the hole only on the main model
Booleans, insets, cuts… everything happens on the working mesh.
3. Add a Vertex Group
Select everything except the hole’s inner loop. This tells Blender where to apply the clean normals.
4. Use the Data Transfer modifier
– Source: the intact mesh
– Data: Custom Normals
– Assign your Vertex Group
– Disable Object Transform (critical if the duplicate was moved)
5. (Optional but powerful)
Add Subdivision only to the intact mesh to generate ultra-smooth normals.
The result is a panel that keeps its geometry intact while recovering the original, clean curvature—perfect for automotive modeling, hard-surface assets, and game-ready surfaces that need flawless reflections.
👉 Full step-by-step tutorial with screenshots here:
https://3dskillup.art/how-to-fix-shading-artifacts-on-curved-surfaces-in-blender/