Smoothing Groups in CE3

Chicken Dip

Hey guys, I was having a discussion with a mate regarding smoothing groups in engines and I wanted to know if you can put everything in one smoothing group or is it best to have everything on 90Degrees separate? I know that in UDK you can put them all in 1 smoothing group and let the engine do the rest, is CE3 the same?

choco

Hey there,
It really depends on the type of mesh and how the edges are setup (are there any bevels at the 90degree angles corners ? any support edges ?).
In most cases you can easily go with a single smoothing group, the engine handles normal map distortion really well (better then UDK) even tho its better to have clean normals with minimal distortion.
Don't hesitate to do some tests with different setups and see what works best for you.

Cap

choco wrote: »

Hey there,
It really depends on the type of mesh and how the edges are setup (are there any bevels at the 90degree angles corners ? any support edges ?).
In most cases you can easily go with a single smoothing group, the engine handles normal map distortion really well (better then UDK) even tho its better to have clean normals with minimal distortion.
Don't hesitate to do some tests with different setups and see what works best for you.

I would agree. Even though CE3 handles normals pretty well however, it can still be very situation specific. I would 2nd what choco said about doing some simple tests with basic shapes, it will help you out in the future to know how a specfic unwrap/SG setup/bake will turn out in engine. Heres one I did awhile back, its several cubes unwrapped and smoothed various ways (baked in Max 2012). Perhaps you or someone else can get something out of it.