Weird shading on models exported from Blender.

[Arth]

Hello!

 

I've got an issue that isn't anything huge or gamebreaking in any way, but rather a small aesthetic bug which is slowly, but steadily driving me nuts on my models.

I haven't been able to find a thread on this, although I am pretty sure there has already been one. If so, please don't burn me and direct me to an appropriate place.

 

The problem:

Recently I've made a skin for my fellow clan member, which I based on base Twi'lek model (jedi_tf).

I imported it into blender, split some meshes, but I didn't touch any vertices that are on the borders between different parts. When I exported it into the game, everything worked fine but the shading was nowhere near what it used to be on base model. The shader file is directly copied from original, with only bits I changed that shouldn't affect this matter anyway.

 

The difference is quite noticeable to say the least. (Sorry I didn't bother to change back to normal textures, but I guess everyone can clearly see what's the deal.)

 

 

 

 

My model looks like it was LITERALLY frankensteined.

The shading on base skin is smooth and nice, while mine looks just like a bunch of parts stuck together.

Okay, I've changed few vertices, but the same thing happens to the meshes I didn't even touch. I'm pretty sure it's either my mistake with some settings, although there is really none of them in exporter, or just the working of the exporter itself which is already a great piece of code, so I don't mean to blame anyone.

 

Is there any way to change that? This would make some of my models SO much better.

 

Thanks in advance,

Arth.

[Psyk0Sith]

Looks like UV splits as a result from importing into blender. I'm sure blender has the option to export as 1 smoothing group (or set them up properly). There might be an option somewhere at import / export to take care of the issue...dunno since i'm not a blender user.

[mrwonko]

Unfortunately the import isn't lossless - normals are lost, and I'm not even sure Blender supports custom normals, so maybe there's no way to fix this...

[AshuraDX]

Unfortunately the import isn't lossless - normals are lost, and I'm not even sure Blender supports custom normals, so maybe there's no way to fix this...

There is a plugin for custom normals, allthough I doubt that it'll be supported by your exporter as it stands now.

[ooeJack]

I've tried an addon for Blender called Blend4Web, which states that using this addon, you can change the normals on your mesh manually. I've tested this, and while it does actually edit the edge normals according to Blender, the vertex normals stay the same. The vertex normals are the ones that need to change.

 

https://jkhub.org/images/2lOl4ef.png

 

Select a segment, go to edit mode, and open the side panel that's on the right hand side of the 3D view. Find in there a subsection called 'Mesh Display', and there you can toggle the vertex normals. As you can see in the above image, along the seam, there are 2 vertex normals pointing in different directions. That's what's causing the normal seam. If we can get those vertex normals to be like the rest (just 1, or both pointing in the exact same direction), it should be fixed.

 

 

ooeJack

[ooeJack]

I also recall seeing in a different thread about this problem people talking about 1 of the JKA SDK tools, carcass. In the blender pipeline, we don't use them. But I remember reading that there was some smoothing options there... I can't seem to access carcass at the moment though.

 

 

ooeJack

[Psyk0Sith]

To clarify the above post: carcass has an option you can set to either keep split surfaces (ghetto smoothing groups) or weld everything together (1 smoothing group). You need to have the .XSI to do that and follow build protocol or you're stepping into a world of pain.

 

@Arth The fix should be pretty straight forward in blender, just weld the verts back together and export.

[mrwonko]

You can't export welded UV seams, sadly, so it's often impossible to fix.

[Psyk0Sith]

I meant weld the mesh itself, the glm importer does the same in max, all you have to do is weld the mesh verts back together, not the UV's, sorry. Some engines / exporters also split the mesh if you have the UV's offset out of the 0,0 uv layout, so another thing to look out for.

[mrwonko]

I know what you meant, but it won't export if the vertices are welded but the UVs are not.