Assigning smooth groups to each UV island in Modo?

CognizanCe

Hello everyone,
I have a lot of islands and a  smoothing group needs to be assigned to each one.

From what I understand, the normal modo workflow would be to select each island/group of polygons, then assign and name the group.

Is there a faster, less painful way of doing this?

I'm using MODO INDIE so I won't have access to scripts/plugins.

Farfarer

For smoothing groups, there's no easy way of doing that.

For setting hard edges, it's a bit easier.

Vertex Maps > Set Vertex Normals. Untick "Use Smoothing Angle" and set Smoothness to 100%.
Then from UV tools, Select > Select UV Border.
Then, from the Edge tools, Split Normals (or Geometry > Edge > Split Normals). Set Level to 100%.

CognizanCe

Farfarer said:

For smoothing groups, there's no easy way of doing that.

For setting hard edges, it's a bit easier.

Vertex Maps > Set Vertex Normals. Untick "Use Smoothing Angle" and set Smoothness to 100%.
Then from UV tools, Select > Select UV Border.
Then, from the Edge tools, Split Normals (or Geometry > Edge > Split Normals). Set Level to 100%.

Thanks man,
Sseems to have done what I wanted.
We'll see how this bakes.....

CognizanCe

So Farfarer,
Any idea why I'm getting these messed up edges?



I don't know how to change/increase the edge padding of my created mesh, and I hope that's the only problem.

I'm using a cage as described here:
https://forums.unrealtournament.com/showthread.php?16986-How-to-import-game-asset-from-Modo-to-Unreal-Engine-4
-But I'm baking within modo 901 (can't export anything high poly).

Farfarer

Edge padding requires two things...

An Alpha Render Output (there should be one in the scene by default). This is what it keys the border expansion off.

And the padding to be upped (defaults to 3 pixels) - that's in System > Preferences > Rendering / Final Rendering > Bake UV Border Size... you can set it to something like 128 and leave it be :P

CognizanCe

Farfarer said:

Edge padding requires two things...

An Alpha Render Output (there should be one in the scene by default). This is what it keys the border expansion off.

And the padding to be upped (defaults to 3 pixels) - that's in System > Preferences > Rendering / Final Rendering > Bake UV Border Size... you can set it to something like 128 and leave it be :P

Thanks.
The padding did remove SOME of the black marks (artifacts?), but not all of them.

I looked at the bake to find some edges have these white marks on the seams.
I suspect these are causing the baking errors.
What can be causing this?



Normally I retopo in 3dcoat and bake in xnormal.
Since I'm using modo indie, I cannot export my high res mesh, and don't wanna break it into pieces to export it.
-I just really wanna get into modo after hearing so much about it, and this is my final hurdle (I hope).

CognizanCe

To get around the poly export limit, I had to break up the high poly into chunks, open and subdivide it in maya, then export and bake to low poly in xnormal.

Xnormal baked it darn near perfectly, even without a cage.

So unfortunately, this might just be modo being not so good at baking....

Farfarer

Modo is pretty good at baking, just setting it up is a little trickier than in dedicated apps like xNormal. We're working on improving that.

Did you bake with a cage? If not, you'll get issues around your hard edges (which is generally true of all bakers).

CognizanCe

Farfarer said:

Did you bake with a cage? If not, you'll get issues around your hard edges (which is generally true of all bakers).

Top is an example of a modo bake with a cage. It looked worse without the cage.
Bottom is an xnormal bake without a cage.

Looks like I'll have to use Xnormal for baking, but splitting up my high res mesh into smaller pieces, then subdividing in another program like blender (because of the modo indie poly export limit) then baking in xnormal is such a bottleneck.
So far, my entire process has been done is modo (high poly, retopology, and UVing) and it's definitely streamlined my process.
Baking was the last hurdle for me/modo.

So anyway, I think the last thing I'll need for now is that low poly cage exported.
I followed the guide here on making the cage:
https://forums.unrealtournament.com/showthread.php?16986-How-to-import-game-asset-from-Modo-to-Unreal-Engine-4
But how do I export that morphed cage?
When I export the layers from modo, it doesn't have the morph applied to it.

-And finally, how do I view my normal map, diffuse map etc on a mesh?
When I create a material in maya for example, there are a lot of properties that I can insert different maps.
How do I do that in modo?

Farfarer

Try inverting the green channel of the modo normal map for a start.

You can tick Invert Green on the texture layer.

To view the textures, just add them in as texture layers and change their effect (right click on the bit to the right where it says Diffuse Color and select the effect you want - modo doesn't have specific slots like Maya or Max, you just stack up layers set to those properties).

Bek

To export the cage you'd duplicate your mesh and apply the morph to it, then export. (Vertex Map -> Apply Morph)

CognizanCe

Bek said:

To export the cage you'd duplicate your mesh and apply the morph to it, then export. (Vertex Map -> Apply Morph)

I'm trying that, but for some reason, as soon as the export is completed, the mesh resets to the way it was before the morph was applied, AND the resulting exported mesh doesn't have the morph applied

Farfarer

So by "apply" I think you mean select. With the morph selected in the list, you're just editing the morph map values in-place. That's not applying it to the model; if you deselect it you go back to editing your mesh, select it again and it's editing the morph map values, etc...

You should be able to go to Vertex Maps > Apply Morph... and actually apply the morph to the mesh permanently. Export, then hit undo a couple of times to undo the applying of the morph map.

CognizanCe

Ok, found a workaround:
Duplicate mesh low poly mesh > export it.
apply push deform to duplicated mesh> export it as cage.
This is is not %100 non destructive, but the LP is duplicated so you'll still have the LP that hasn't had the push modifier.
Any changes to the LP means it would have be be duplicated and exported again, then push modified and exported again, but these are the last stages of exporting, so it's not hat big a deal.

CognizanCe

Farfarer said:

To view the textures, just add them in as texture layers and change their effect (right click on the bit to the right where it says Diffuse Color and select the effect you want - modo doesn't have specific slots like Maya or Max, you just stack up layers set to those properties).

Still no luck.
I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

"m" to create new material > named it normal test 2 > select material in shader tab > add layer > image map > load image > select image from explorer window > right click effect column > surface shading > normal (changed from diffuse color by default) > drag and drop normal test 2 to selected mesh

Still get nothing. Can't see normals on mesh, and here it says to be in "advanced" mode, but still nothing.
http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/discussion/topic.aspx?f=32&t=51027

Farfarer

Ah, the "Advanced" mode is a new one - normal maps aren't implemented in that yet for 901 Indie.

The "Advanced OpenGL" mode he mentions there has been renamed "Default" for 901.

CognizanCe

Farfarer said:

Ah, the "Advanced" mode is a new one - normal maps aren't implemented in that yet for 901 Indie.

The "Advanced OpenGL" mode he mentions there has been renamed "Default" for 901.

Normals not showing no matter which renderer I use.
HOWEVER they show up in the UV room...
?!?!?!?!!?!?

Farfarer

Yeah, the Default viewport will show normals.

We'll have normal maps working in the Advanced viewport soon