uspring, shadows, normals and smoothing groups.

smoth · Post by **smoth** » 31 Jul 2007, 01:40

Ok, so I always fight with smoothing groups because as far as I have seen, wings doesn't do that. Well, I always did my geomitry accordingly to minimalize the effect. It has been some time since I last fiddled with upspring a like a month ago I upgraded it. Now, My models look all shaddowed. What happened I asked myself? What happened to my normals? So I clicked on the normals and smoothing button in upspring and the model's brightness was corrected... but now it has terrible smoothing groups. What the hell! does anyone know what is going on here?

looks fine but dark!

Bright but the vertex normals are wonky!

Is there away to correct the model brightness and not get these ugly wonky normals?

p.s. the images are links to larger versions.

FLOZi · Post by **FLOZi** » 31 Jul 2007, 01:48

Use something other than Wings to apply your smoothing? I've not had any issues lately, Upspring (finally) seems to accept my smoothing as I want it.

Keithus · Post by **Keithus** » 31 Jul 2007, 01:53

Do wings 3d hard edges not export with .obj format?

smoth · Post by **smoth** » 31 Jul 2007, 02:26

FLOZi wrote:Use something other than Wings to apply your smoothing? I've not had any issues lately, Upspring (finally) seems to accept my smoothing as I want it.

That adds another step that I do not need...

funny how it worked fine before:

Pressure Line · Post by **Pressure Line** » 31 Jul 2007, 03:13

i noticed the same thing.

try selecting all objects and "recalculate vertex normals 3do style" i use 75 degrees...

FLOZi · Post by **FLOZi** » 31 Jul 2007, 03:29

Pressure Line wrote:i noticed the same thing.

try selecting all objects and "recalculate vertex normals 3do style" i use 75 degrees...

That's not a perfect tool though, f.ex on the M8 Greyhound in S44, the barrel requires 60 or greater to smooth, but that will smooth the geometry on the sloped angular front, which should have hard edges.

I suppose adding another step in would be annoying; I can't really help it as Rhino 2's poly modelling tools are very limited, its much easier to do it in UU.

smoth · Post by **smoth** » 31 Jul 2007, 03:37

I just checked, my old models, gelgoog etc all had their normals fine, just the new stuff. FUNNY HUH?

Does anyone have a link to the older versions where the import wasn't fucked?

Pressure Line · Post by **Pressure Line** » 31 Jul 2007, 03:41

FLOZi wrote:
Pressure Line wrote:i noticed the same thing.

try selecting all objects and "recalculate vertex normals 3do style" i use 75 degrees...
That's not a perfect tool though, f.ex on the M8 Greyhound in S44, the barrel requires 60 or greater to smooth, but that will smooth the geometry on the sloped angular front, which should have hard edges.

I suppose adding another step in would be annoying; I can't really help it as Rhino 2's poly modelling tools are very limited, its much easier to do it in UU.

you can recalc the vertices seperately per object. try using "selected objects" instead of "all objects"

FLOZi · Post by **FLOZi** » 31 Jul 2007, 03:45

smoth wrote:I just checked, my old models, gelgoog etc all had their normals fine, just the new stuff. FUNNY HUH?

Does anyone have a link to the older versions where the import wasn't fucked?

It is very funny, as for me, only the most recent versions HAVEN'T been fucked.

smoth · Post by **smoth** » 31 Jul 2007, 03:48

maybe I missed an update... he need to put the version number in the about section.

Peet · Post by **Peet** » 31 Jul 2007, 03:49

changelog wrote:Changes for 1.54
----------------
- Texture image handling rewrite,
this fixes the reduced image quality of textures in previous versions.
- Added new mode of normal calculation, which allows a maximum smoothing angle.

Changes for 1.53
----------------
- Added 3DO to S3O converter.
Colored faces do not work well yet, and DevIL reduces image quality
, but it might still be useful if you want to retexture an old 3DO model.

Changes for 1.52
----------------
- Fixed OBJ normal loading (No idea how it got messed up .. )
- Fixed some crashbugs related to empty objects.

Changes for 1.51
----------------
- Fixed rotating objects in viewport (It switched angles to NaN)

Changes for 1.5
----------------
- Fixed wrong lighting in X-direction for exported S3O models
- Undo/redo support + History viewer (Called Undo buffer viewer)
- Lighting unlockable from camera
- Fixed weird lighting when using untextured solid rendering
- Fixed "add empty"
- Fixed and improved "Set S3O texture dir"
- 3DS smoothing groups are used when 3DS files are imported.

Changes for 1.44
----------------
- Rewritten the sloppy S3O texture handling. Hopefully this will result in less crashes.
- 3DS support rewritten using lib3ds
- A lot of internal refactoring of geometry code

Changes for 1.43
----------------
- Objects can be mirrored by entering negative numbers for scale
- BVH import script added

Changes for 1.42
------------------
- Fixed UV importing
- Fixed OBJ export, it now exports the full model instead of only the root object
- Fixed object replacing

Changes for 1.41
-----------------
- Manual-entering method added for moving the origin

Changes for 1.4
-----------------
- Basic animation support,
- Lua scripting
- Origin-move tool
- Texture names shouldn't be changed for 3DO models, but it still has to be tested
- 3DO texture rotate
- Object swapping, can swap any pair of objects including parent/child
- Rewritten rotation code, using quaternions
- Rotator dialog, supports relative rotation and absolute rotations
- Fixed transformation errors in saving

Those are all the ones up there...hopefully one of em works.

Argh · Post by **Argh** » 31 Jul 2007, 04:00

I use the 3DO smoothing, and go on a piece-by-piece basis. What you're describing is why I had Jelmer add that to the last version of UpSpring in the first place.

It acts, for all practical intents and purposes, exactly like applying smoothing in any other 3D application. The amount of degree, btw, is the amount of difference between vertex angles before Spring will treat it as "rounded", and shade accordingly- therefore, for strongly-rounded objects, you want to use a value of 85+, for very harsh, polygonal surfaces, use a very low value, and fiddle in-between for things that have a combination of curves and straights. If you're having serious issues with a particular area of a model (say, the intakes on that flying commander of yours, which should be really clean, not foggy), then when exporting, export that part as a separate Piece so that you can apply a different smoothing value.

FLOZi · Post by **FLOZi** » 31 Jul 2007, 04:02

Argh wrote:I use the 3DO smoothing, and go on a piece-by-piece basis. What you're describing is why I had Jelmer add that to the last version of UpSpring in the first place.

It acts, for all practical intents and purposes, exactly like applying smoothing in any other 3D application. The amount of degree, btw, is the amount of difference between vertex angles before Spring will treat it as "rounded", and shade accordingly- therefore, for strongly-rounded objects, you want to use a value of 85+, for very harsh, polygonal surfaces, use a very low value, and fiddle in-between for things that have a combination of curves and straights. If you're having serious issues with a particular area of a model (say, the intakes on that flying commander of yours, which should be really clean, not foggy), then when exporting, export that part as a separate Piece so that you can apply a different smoothing value.

Sounds like far more work than my method.

Argh · Post by **Argh** » 31 Jul 2007, 04:06

Not really. Takes maybe 2 minutes to apply and test in UpSpring, on average. And you're going to apply angular vertex values to objects you smooth, no matter what you're using, so ya might as well do it in the application you're using for final export. And, um, 3DS doesn't preserve smoothing when imported into UpSpring, but it preserves object hierarchies, so I don't use anything else- importing an OBJ piece-by-piece is a terrific waste of time, frankly.

FLOZi · Post by **FLOZi** » 31 Jul 2007, 04:14

Argh wrote:Not really. Takes maybe 2 minutes to apply and test in UpSpring, on average. And you're going to apply angular vertex values to objects you smooth, no matter what you're using, so ya might as well do it in the application you're using for final export. And, um, 3DS doesn't preserve smoothing when imported into UpSpring, but it preserves object hierarchies, so I don't use anything else- importing an OBJ piece-by-piece is a terrific waste of time, frankly.

Actually, you aren't.

smoth · Post by **smoth** » 31 Jul 2007, 04:21

I was using all the way back to 1.3 and it was there that it started. Somewhere after jc implemented some wierd normals thing for argh. I had not tried the version then. But it was very very old. Probably 1.2 or something like that. maybe fileuniverse has a copy.

smoth · Post by **smoth** » 31 Jul 2007, 04:23

Argh wrote:Not really. Takes maybe 2 minutes to apply and test in UpSpring, on average. And you're going to apply angular vertex values to objects you smooth, no matter what you're using, so ya might as well do it in the application you're using for final export.

But it isn't right argh. It imported fine before it was "fixed"

Argh wrote: importing an OBJ piece-by-piece is a terrific waste of time, frankly.

hey, if you want to help me buy a copy of 3ds for like oh... 100$ I may be game but it is a bit too expensive as it is now.

smoth · Post by **smoth** » 31 Jul 2007, 04:27

also, "play with it" doesn't cut it. I have been playing with it for like an hour. No, it is broken. I creates sharp edges on one spot and rounded on another MIRRORED spot. This makes me soo pissed I want to break something. I have lost an entire evening to this.

smoth · Post by **smoth** » 31 Jul 2007, 04:43

ready for the fun part people? because I am!

DO NOT SCALE IN UPSPRING!

I just managed to import the model fine without scaling it.

I noticed it when I was importing my pieces for the 3rd time that model seemed fine until I scaled it. So one way to avoid this crap is to no scale your models.

HOo RAH!

smoth · Post by **smoth** » 31 Jul 2007, 05:52

interesting, ok, so if you PRESCALE your parts you are fine but scaling changes things...

the hips down are prescaled the torso, arms, head, sheild and gun are scaled in upspring... notice the difference:

(click for larger picture)

Spring RTS Engine

uspring, shadows, normals and smoothing groups.

uspring, shadows, normals and smoothing groups.