Hi Martin,
thanks for the info.
I had only checked for the case of getting hard edges from Maya into
Softimage
and keeping those edges selectible and displayed blue, I didn´t check
for what
successively setting egdes to hard would do to a mesh´s clusters.
Good to know.
Last time I had to deliver Softimage files directly, I´d manually tidy
up (along the
lines you describe for clean final data). That´s a while ago.
Regarding Substance Designer&Painter, I use it for it´s mask generators
mostly.
Typical scratched metal blended materials masks, a dirt&dust pass over
clean materials,
that kind of thing. It´s pretty good at that and beats having no masks
due to time/task anyway...
Cheers,
tim
Am 14.04.2015 um 05:45 schrieb Martin Yara:
I wanted to convert normal clusters because sometimes I don't have the
original Maya file, but that's ok. I'll just have to get the Maya file
or make them use Smoothing Groups in the FBX export options in the
future.
About clusters, I always freeze and delete all clusters. I work mainly
in game assets production so I try to keep my final data as clean as
possible to avoid any possible export problem. I never keep points or
edge clusters (the only point cluster is the envelope one), lattice or
any deformer besides envelope.
If you keep adding hard edges you'll end up with tons of edge
clusters. That's why I wrote something to automatically freeze Mark
Edges op and delete the edge cluster.
You don't really need clusters at all for hard edges. Just freeze and
delete the cluster. The same for any other deformer that you don't
need to be alive.
Softimage should have a clean cluster option. Any studio that I've
been or work with uses a custom tool for that.
You can easily script something for hard edges selections with
ICEAttributes if you need, or you can use crease filter selection
because hard edges in Softimage are also creased by default.
I don't have much experience with Substance so I can't say anything
about it.
cheers,
Martin
On Mon, Apr 13, 2015 at 8:12 PM, Tim Leydecker <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
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 <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> 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 <[email protected]
<mailto:[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]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
>>> Subject: Hard edges from Maya to Softimage
>>> To: "[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>"
>>> <[email protected]
<mailto:[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
>
