Model Lighting and Invisible Objects

[Azatha]

So, I have finally got the weights on the model I'm editing to work with the wonderful help of Milamber. But now I have two new problems:

 

The parts on my model have weird shading in game now. The light doesn't smooth from piece to piece. I have tried editing normals, which looked great in 3ds max 8, but ingame the edits don't seem to show at all. (For example, my head has darker shadows than my body, creating a very visible line of different lighting between the neck and the torso.) Also, two pieces I added, a hair and some claws, turn completely invisible when I try to use an alpha shader on them (to make them more jagged, etc). Now I know the shader I have works, because I use it on other hairs and outfits and such, on the same model before my edits as well on other parts of the model I'm editing. I can only assume something funky is going on with the model pieces themselves and I have no knowledge of how to fix it. Help!

 

 

 

Bonus question: When skinning, every once in a while an image file pathname suddenly doesn't work in modview anymore. Ie, I had a model with the model part head_lashes, tied to a file called lashes.png. This file and the many .skin files that referenced it remained untouched for ages. Then one day, opened it in modview, and bam, it won't register any file called lashes.png. Rename to eyelashes.png, and it works. Rename back to lashes.png, definitely won't read it. I've had this happen with two other pieces. It's like modview just decides to reject a file name all of a sudden. And yes, I'm 100% certain the file paths are all correct, been using the same image/model/skins for about 5 years now. So... wut?

[Milamber]

Milamember? :<

 

The shading messup is a result of the glm importer you're using, it doesn't import the normals correctly. Right now I don't remember how to fix it though <.< been a while since I actually used that one, or the normal process with having to use carcass and all that.

[Azatha]

Whoops! Didn't mean to type it like that. Autopilot typing. Sorry.  

 

And ah I see. Well, hopefully someone might remember how to fix it?   ;_;

[Psyk0Sith]

Alpha maps: do you see any error messages when you bring down the console (after loading the model)? It could be a shader issue, if you used any. Was the png file saved in the proper format?. Apply a texture without alpha to make sure everything shows up correctly, you need to isolate the problem by doing changes one at a time, you probably tried most of these but you never know.

 

Shading errors: the seams or shadow issues are caused by the split meshes, just like using different smoothing groups in max. JA doesn't support custom vertex normals done in max so that approach won't work. Try the options in assimilate called "smooth all surfaces" and "remove duplicate verts during compile", try one at a time and see if it helps. 

 

The glm importer in max imports geometry based on UV splits, that is how most game engines work. It's a lot more obvious with engines that support normal mapping, but it's been this way for a while. So think of smooth all as using 1 smoothing group, while the other method is based on UV shells / manually split edges. So what you import doesn't matter, it's how you choose to smooth it that defines how it will look in the game, if you don't touch the mesh expect odd shading.

[Azatha]

The invisible pieces work so long as no shader is applied. But the moment any shader is applied they disappear.

 

I'll try the assimilate stuff and see if it works. I'll post the results!

[Azatha]

Okay, a bit late on, but I finally got around to trying the assimilate options. I went to try what you said ANNDDD... nothing. Those options don't seem to exist in my Assimilate. I don't know if I have too old of a version or what. That or I'm just really not seeing where I'm supposed to find those options. Are there multiple versions of Assimilate?

[Psyk0Sith]

Sorry for late reply. In version 2.1 double click on the "humanoid:" folder and you'll see the options.

[Azatha]

Checking that box in Assimilate worked! All the lighting is nice and smooth now, thank you so much! I would've never discovered that option on my own.