Modo - export smoothing groups, correct tangentspace format for quixel suite
polycounter lvl 9
Hi,
I have two issues:
- I can't seem to get smoothing groups exported from Modo. I have smoothing groups applied ro a few parts of the mesh, and have assigned a material that has its smoothing angle set to 180 degrees. However, both with OBJ or FBX, the smoothing isn't exported correctly, instead it looks like there is a smoothing with a 40 degree angle applied.
- What's the correct tangentspace format for 3do in quixel suite? As far as I know, the renderer is basically marmoset, which comes with a converter... but I don't have marmoset, only quixel. So which tangentspace format do I use? Handplane doesn't have a marmoset preset, is the 3dsmax the right one?
I have two issues:
- I can't seem to get smoothing groups exported from Modo. I have smoothing groups applied ro a few parts of the mesh, and have assigned a material that has its smoothing angle set to 180 degrees. However, both with OBJ or FBX, the smoothing isn't exported correctly, instead it looks like there is a smoothing with a 40 degree angle applied.
- What's the correct tangentspace format for 3do in quixel suite? As far as I know, the renderer is basically marmoset, which comes with a converter... but I don't have marmoset, only quixel. So which tangentspace format do I use? Handplane doesn't have a marmoset preset, is the 3dsmax the right one?
Replies
Also, I'm not sure Marmoset have released the code for their proprietary tangent space, so I'm not sure you can sync to it.
I am forced to use obj since that's the only format that quixel supports.
Are you sure there's no way to make properly synced normal maps for quixel? There are tons of people using it, they must need something to make it work... or are they all using the converter from the marmoset toolbag?
Baking into a vertex map solved it for both fbx and obj, but alas, I have to be using obj exclusively.
I have now found out that the unity tangentspace preset in handplane looks reasonably good in 3do.
That has a smoothing bug, due to the fact that the smoothing isn't calculated until the mesh is drawn in the viewport (and as that's an entirely scripted operation - it copies the selected meshes to a new scene then saves the new scene - it's never rendered in the viewport). The solution, as you've found out, is to bake down the normals into a vertex map, which will override whatever smoothing the mesh has.
Your best bet is to set your FBX options to "Export selected and hierarchy" and simply use File > Export As... then choose FBX. That shouldn't have any major issues.
Warren: That option is for exporting smoothing groups.
By and large, people don't have smoothing groups on their meshes in Modo anyway, because they're a bit broken. Normals are always exported to FBX, as far as I know.
And if you have it enabled, then Unity will recalculate the normals on the mesh at import because it's importer can't handle being given smoothing groups and explicit normals or something silly.
I'd like to add for anyone with the same workflow: You need to triple (=triangulate) the mesh in modo, or otherwise the exporter (or 3Do's importer?) will triangulate it differently than it should.