Advanced Member Gian-Reto Posted July 3, 2013 Advanced Member Report Share Posted July 3, 2013 (edited) Hi I'm going mad here with my problem, so I hope one of you guys can help me: I modeled a car in voxels and created a retopo mesh of it. As I wanted to keep the wheels as separate objects, that share a single UV Texture, I only modeled one wheel. the plan was to export the model to blender, fix the origin points, duplicate the wheel, and re-import to 3d coat to paint. Well, that plan sounded good until I found out that Blender hates 3d coat with passion (or I'm doing something terribly wrong): - I exported my model as obj, only the normals selected in the export dialog, and nothing else! - When I open in blender, I can't see my normal map in the 3d viewport, only when rendering (could be normal, I'm not a blender expert), and the shading is set to flat for all objects (I assume the shading is set to a default). - I set shading to smooth, re-export it as obj (or dae, makes no difference), and open in 3D Coat again. The normal map is lost, I have to import it again. Now it looks okayish, but has weird shading errors all over the model (see attached image) I had this problem before when exporting to Blender, thats why I tried to stay away from it. but now it seems there is no way around it! I even tried wings3d in my desparation, just to get the same problem there too... Now, the area where the problem appears is not 100% flat (hard to achieve with a manual retopo), though it looks that way after the retopo in 3D Coat, with the normal map applied. Its only after exporting to obj (or dae), opening in blender / wings3D, applying smooth shading (or doing nothing in Wings3D), re-exporting to obj (or dae), and importing to 3D Coat again for pixel painting and importing the normal map again, that the problem appears. So here are my questions: -> Does anyone know how to import a model made in 3D Coat to blender and prevent this weird shading error from happening after the re-import? -> is there any other good 3d tool out there, that doesn't cost an arm and a leg (3DS Max and Maya are just to expensive for me at the moment), that does duplication and origin setting, and is proven to play nice with 3D Coat shading? -> is there any way to duplicate meshes and set the origin in 3D Coat? I guess not, but it would be my favorite, as I have become cranky about other tools messing about with the shading set by 3D coat.... Thanks in advance for any help Regards Gian-Reto Edited July 3, 2013 by Gian-Reto Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Gian-Reto Posted July 3, 2013 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted July 3, 2013 Okay, I found the problem. I didn't set the option "use smoothing groups" when merging to the paint room. This, set to 60 degrees, solved all the problems. So it wasn't really blenders fault.... more that of the 3D Coat renderer hiding the faults, somehow, until it was re-imported. Doh.... I feel stupid now! Maybe that helps another 3D Coat noob to not waste a day before trying this option. Regards Gian-Reto Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlosan Posted July 3, 2013 Report Share Posted July 3, 2013 Ty Gian-Reto Could you please post some wip pics in the wip forum ? http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showforum=13 will be great for others user to see step by step how do you model a car from voxels to retopo ty --------------------- Note The next Blender release -2.68- add support for export/export .OBJ smooth groups. I use Hexagon too for some tasks, is free and good http://www.daz3d.com/products/hexagon/hexagon-what-is-hexagon Caligari trueSpace 7.61 is free too, old but very good Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Gian-Reto Posted July 4, 2013 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted July 4, 2013 (edited) Hi Okay, thanks for the info. It might be a little late now for a WIP (other than painting ) ... but I might do a short description of the path I took, and the (many) "road bumps" I had to work around... might spare another noob some pain in handling multipart models, that need to be treated in Blender before exporting to a game engine. Maybe its just me not reading tutorials and manuals fully, but there are so many things you have to know, which won't give you a clean error and aren't really obvious (like for example that you have to combine all imported normalmaps (when working with a multi-UV model, the normals get exported into separate maps) into a single layer in the paint room, else the result will look wonky. Took me some time before I figured that out, even though it looks obvious now) I tried hexagon, but got stuck (mostly because I didn't buy the software yet... but at 20 bucks, I might do the jump)... by free you mean like "free" for real, or shareware like in "free until you try to export"? The last one is what I expierienced, might have downloaded the wrong release though. While the thread is still open, I just got stuck on another weird issue: -> after I cloned the suspension and the wheels, I exported the car to obj, opened it in 3D Coat again, and with the smoothing groups it now looked like planned (after some bugfixing of non-quads and non-tris... an automatic function to detect that in 3D Coat would be very helpful, is there any?). I exported it to an obj again, as I wanted to test the unpainted version in Unity first before painting. Looked great after some tinkering with shaders and textures. But while setting up my steering-scripts I found out that all the objects lost their origin during the import to 3d coat! Is there anything I can do to preserve origins and parenting when opening an obj file in 3D Coat? My whole animation scripting revolves around the origins being placed correctly, so this is a gamebraker for me. Also, when exporting the mesh from blender, I somehow get shading problems again in Unity (guess the smoothing groups get lost, and the edge split modifier seems to not do the same thing), so I guess I have to at least import the obj file to 3D coat, applying the smoothing groups again, before I can export it for unity, so there is no way around it. However, I haven't tried Hexagon for real yet. Does it play nicer with 3d coat models than blender? Can it set object origins too? EDIT: ah, just re-read your answer again. Does that mean, from the next release onwards I might be able to apply the smoothing groups in blender also, just like what can be done now in 3D Coat? EDIT 2: Ignore my "weird issue" question about loosing the origin points for now... seems to be an issue with the blender obj and fbx exporter. Damn, as powerful as the tool might be, sometimes its limitations are ridiculous! EDIT 3: Ah well, there still seems to be a problem with the 3D Coat exporter. When I export as collada from blender, the origin points are preserved (though some weird axis switching is taking place, might be a export error on my behalf though) when I open it in blender again. After importing to 3D Coat, origins are lost again, with both exporting to obj and collada. Is there an option in 3D Coat to preserve origin points? Regards Gian-Reto Edited July 4, 2013 by Gian-Reto 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlosan Posted July 4, 2013 Report Share Posted July 4, 2013 Ty Gian-Reto from the next release onwards I might be able to apply the smoothing groups in blender also, just like what can be done now in 3D Coat yes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Gian-Reto Posted July 4, 2013 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted July 4, 2013 cool, many thanks... I didn't find this information in the Release Notes. But I see there is a Release Client available already, any idea how you set this smoothing groups in the new version? Regards Gian-Reto Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlosan Posted July 4, 2013 Report Share Posted July 4, 2013 the release planned to add it is 2.68 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Gian-Reto Posted July 4, 2013 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted July 4, 2013 (edited) I read the release notes of 2.68 but didn't found it mentioned (http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.68) Well, I'll check the release candidate over the weekend and see if I find anything about smoothing groups. Maybe it just wasn't mentioned in the release notes. EDIT: Ah, I see the release notes are changing as I read them... maybe a little early to really go looking for features in them ... I'll check back later I guess. Regards Gian-Reto Edited July 4, 2013 by Gian-Reto Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlosan Posted July 5, 2013 Report Share Posted July 5, 2013 v2.8_RC1 http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/ add support for writing smooth groups for OBJ https://github.com/sambler/myblenderaddons/commit/7c523d31bb193aa5c2b78a486b670e3e50d1e6b9 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Gian-Reto Posted July 5, 2013 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted July 5, 2013 Gave the Release Client a spin... I'm not 100% sure I did the right thing (as for one, I can't choose the angle for the smoothing group as I can in 3D Coat). But the whole thing didn't do anything for me. Sad really, as it would have solved my problems. Maybe it will change with the Release version, but I won't hold my breath. What I did: I selected "smooth groups" when importing the obj file... It did import it as smooth instead of flat. But the smoothing groups set in 3D Coat got clearly lost, and what blender set wasn't as exact (when imported in unity, some almost flat polygons are still visible from the shading) No matter if exported to obj and imported to unity, or imported directly from the Blender file, it seems the shading errors can only be avoided if its imported back into 3D Coat and exported to obj from there. I guess I need to place a feature request for 3D Coat for retaining the origins of objects. thanks anyway Gian-Reto Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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