I don´t know about converting normal clusters because I can´t really
see what you´d want to convert them to?
In general, they are useful to assing different materials or is it because
of the clusters that you have problems using the mesh in Quixel Suite
or Substance Designer because each cluster will generate a separate
material there, even if that cluster was just meant for hard eges?
Afaik, the clusters are needed inside softimage, you´d want that cluster
to be able to select the hardened edges inside softimage, using RMB
"select components".
When facing problems with meshes generating multiple material entries
inside Substance Designer/Painter, I like to resort to exporting an *.obj
file, making sure I have only the actual UVset I need as "map1" merging
all elements into a new mesh I want to have share one texture set.
If that fails, I delete the *.mtl file that´ll be generated along with
the *.obj.
If I can, I´ll also assign the default lambert Maya material, especially
when
I want to salvage stuff from an existing Substance Tree.
In a nutshell, I´ll try to do *.obj exports from Maya, avoiding
Softimage Clusters.
tim
P.S: When I´m refering to *.fbx in a 2014 build version, it´s because
that´s what a
Unreal Engine 4 expects to get, afaik they don´t support the fbx 2015
fully officially.
Am 13.04.2015 um 11:58 schrieb Martin Yara:
It worked ! Thanks!
It was the "Smoothing Groups" in Maya, it wasn't checked.
I still wish there was a way to convert that normal cluster though :P
Martin
On Sun, Apr 12, 2015 at 6:33 PM, Tim Leydecker <bauero...@gmx.de
<mailto:bauero...@gmx.de>> wrote:
In the Softimage FBX import options, there is a checkbox under
"Include":
Hard Edges - that´s off by default, you want this on.
I´m setting this to on and then I get a MarkHardEdge/Vertex op
floating in the Modeling Stack on import of the *.fbx
Those egdes are indentical to what I selected as Hard edges in
Maya and
they show up blue as one would expect inside Softimage.
Unless you had triangulate on while exporting from Maya, that´ll
create
extra
hardened edges, due to the triangulate option doing it´s thing.
Unreal4engine would like to have Tri´s for import of *.fbx files
but in
terms
of full control, it´s not adviseable to have *.fbx decide on
triangulation.
It´s better to do that manually based on the desired result and
have *.fbx
not triangulate automatically, which can lead to unwanted shading
errors.
For best I/O between Softimage and Maya, autotriangulation should
definitely
be off.
Cheers,
tim
Am 12.04.2015 um 11:09 schrieb Martin:
> 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 <bauero...@gmx.de
<mailto:bauero...@gmx.de>> 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 <furik...@gmail.com <mailto:furik...@gmail.com>>
>>> Subject: Hard edges from Maya to Softimage
>>> To: "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>"
>>> <softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>>
>>>
>>> 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
>
