6. Selected the normals going in the "same direction"
(The outer ring of the mouth polygon where it's supposed to blend in)
7. Averaged the two polygon's normals.
Ahaa~!
I don't think I was clear enough on this part. Sorry about that.
Don't select the entire ring all at once. When something is averaged, it all points in the same direction. Such a large amount of normals being averaged will take away their individuality, causing the "reflective tape" effect.
Do it like this. First click both the models and add an "Editable Mesh/Editable Poly" modifier, then go to the vertex button. Look at the vertices for both the face and the mouth at the same time. For TLink, if you hold and drag a selection box over one of the vertices in the boundary, you'll select not one but
two vertices.
What this means is that the modeler shaped TLink's head as one object, and then used "Detach" or something like that to rip out the faces. This means that the vertices there match up perfectly but aren't connected, therefore proving the need for two in one spot so you can't see any holes. Unfortunately, the normal for the mouth vertex goes in a different direction than the normal for the head vertex in the same spot, which is why they don't match up and look so bad.
What you're doing with "average," is selecting all the normals which connect to the "spot" where those two boundary vertices meet. When you average them, the conflicting normals between the two vertices in that "spot" for those two vertices get forced to all point at the same angle. And since all the vertices' normals are at the same angle (essentially the same normal), there's no distinction between the polygons even though they aren't connected.)
You see how at the top I've got only two normals selected?
I press the average button and then they become "one." That's what we're doing.
When you find a "pair of vertices" you need to average the normals of
only those vertices.After that, you need to
average the normals for every pair of vertices individually until you're done.I hope that's more clear for you. I'll edit the OP Tutorial.