I only get a normal cluster, so visually it is the same but the edges are not 
marked (no blue edges).

I'll try different options and FBX versions just in case. Maybe something had 
changed in newer versions.

Although it is visually the same, the problem with this normal cluster is that 
it is very fragile if you need to change topology and do some other things 
after that. Also any script reading hard edges won't work. Also you can't add 
hard edges because this cluster overrides everything. I'm not sure how much 
this could affect the output to a game data format but the biggest problem is 
that my client just won't accept a normal cluster instead normal hard edges.

The easiest solution I found was to disconnect hard edges in Maya, and in SI, 
select border edges, mark them as hard and merge. Easily scriptable. Not quite 
the same but close enough.

The problem is when I don't have the original Maya data and only have an FBX 
and/or a SI data with user normal cluster. I though it wouldn't be that hard to 
convert somehow that cluster to edges, but it seems it is.

Martin
Sent from my iPhone

> On 2015/04/12, at 17:17, Tim Leydecker <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Maybe I don“t get the question properly but for the following, it seems to 
> work:
> 
> In Maya, create Polysphere, select some edges, go to Normals>Harden Edge
> 
> Export the sphere using *.fbx, in the *.fbx export options under Geometry, 
> make
> sure that "Smoothing Groups" is ticked on and Tangents and Binormals is on, 
> too.
> 
> IIRC, in the *.fbx export options, those setting can sometimes be ticked off 
> from a preset.
> 
> In Softimage, go to File>Import>Import FBX...
> 
> In my little test using Maya 2014/Softimage2014 and *.fbx plug-in version 
> 2014.1 (release 214447),
> the sphere came in fine into Softimage, showing the hard edge rings created 
> in Maya correctly.
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> tim
> 
> 
>> Am 12.04.2015 um 00:46 schrieb Matt Lind:
>> Technically speaking, hard edges is just a special case of normal cluster 
>> where the specific normals associated with the edges are not smoothed via 
>> smoothing/discontinuity/etc... They are left in their original raw state 
>> (perpendicular to surface).  You do not need to create "hard edges" to have 
>> the same end result of faceted edges on the mesh.  You only need to know 
>> which normals in the normal cluster should be interpolated vs. not.
>> 
>> Normals live on samples (or 'polygon nodes' for the specific case of polygon 
>> meshes), which are the original unshared vertices of the mesh.  If you want 
>> to preserve hard edges coming from Maya, you'll need to keep track of the 
>> sample indices and make sure they don't change during the transition.  If 
>> the samples change order, then your backup plan is to record the vertex 
>> index and polygon index together in Maya and pass that along as metadata to 
>> Softimage as that'll be needed to identify which sample on a vertex should 
>> be flagged for hard edges (because each vertex in Softimage has multiple 
>> samples).
>> 
>> If polygon indices change too, then the only brute force method available is 
>> to unshared all the edges of the mesh in Maya to force the vertices to be 
>> unique so when you get them over to Softimage it'll be easy to identify and 
>> flag...but of course unsharing on it's own will force hard edges on all the 
>> unshared edges so in some ways will defeat the purpose.
>> 
>> An alternate non brute force method (if all the indices keep shifting 
>> around) is to apply a vertex color property or UVW texture projection and 
>> record the edge flags there, then have a plugin in Softimage read that data 
>> and apply the hard edges.  A little clunky, but perfectly functional as I'm 
>> pretty sure vertex colors and texture UVW coordinates are properly converted.
>> 
>> Matt
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2015 19:31:06 +0900
>> From: Martin Yara <[email protected]>
>> Subject: Hard edges from Maya to Softimage
>> To: "[email protected]"
>> <[email protected]>
>> 
>> Hi list,
>> Is there any way to export hard edges from Maya to Softimage as hard edges
>> (not normal clusters) ?
>> I though about getting a list of edges from Maya, but when I import the
>> data in Softimage the edge numbers change and differs from Maya. Vertex
>> indexes are the same though.
>> 
>> Or better, is there any way to convert those normal clusters to hard edges?
>> 
>> I have to convert character scene files from Maya to Softimage and right
>> now I'm redoing all the hard edges in Softimage and it is quite time
>> consuming.
>> 
>> Thanks
>> 
>> Martin
> 

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