EDIT: This tool is now in master, and will be part of Blender 2.74 release.
Here are three links on Graphicall.org for testbuilds of current Custom Split Normals state of work:
- Win64: http://www.graphicall.org/1130
- Linux64: http://www.graphicall.org/1131
- OSX64: http://www.graphicall.org/1132
Since first of August, most noticeable changes are:
- A fair amount of bugs were busted (most noticeable being wrong handling of (interpolation) weights, and crash with the modifier when switching target mesh to Edit mode).
- Data structures were tweaked (WARNING: this means files saved with builds from 08/01 are not ‘compatible’ with those new builds, they will load, but all custom normals will be lost).
- Some optimization work was done (especially in code computing final split normals, which is now multi-threaded).
- Modifier UI was reworked, and a new ‘from split normals’ mode was added, which uses split normals of target, instead of its face normals.
As usual, please note that this remains “experimental” code, do not expect on stability of new features yet, nor of the file format (though this one should not change anymore, imho).
Also, if you are doing some nice tests with these builds, I would appreciate some nice screenshots (and even better, .blend files), those would be more than useful for final documentation! 🙂
Please report any bug you may (will!) find to our bug tracker, https://developer.blender.org.