Ambiera ForumDiscussions, Help and Support. |
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(SOLVED!) I noticed that if I import a model to CC, then export the model from CC, something happens to the model geomoetry along the way - it gets severely decimated (either that or polygon smoothing is somehow removed). The issue I'm having is this: I loaded a model to use the CC polygon editor to make changes to it. I then exported and upload to mixamo to animate it, the problem is that the mesh seems to be getting trashed by coppercube's fbx exporter. After animating in mixamo, when I import back to CC, the dynamic lighting doesn't work on the model as it's still severely low-poly. All files work perfectly well - as long as I don't edit/export them from CC first. My question is: is there any way to either prevent CC from decimating the model when it exports - or to repair/restore the file smoothing when it imports back to CC from mixamo? (I have gouraud shading and dynamic lighting on) I spent the whole day editing the model inside coppercube - it looks perfect - but I just can;t seem to export it out of coppercube without trashing it... Here it is after it's exported from CC...... Thanks,. |
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Try import from Mixamo into Blender and shade smooth all the normals again then re-import back into CopperCube and see if fixed. I notice some assets have to have this to have proper light shading in CC to work. When you add a point light with dynamic lighting can then see if correct shading shows up. |
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Ah, Nice one! Hopefully that will work. I've spent too many hours on the model, lol. Nice tip to have in the tool box if it can fix it. I'll give that a try today and report back. Thanks Robo |
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@veganpete This explanation is the one that helped me understand this topic. I hope it will be useful to you... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=... |
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Hmmm, still not working. Shade smoothing doesn't actually seem to do anything after it's been exported from CC for some reason. You're correct though, normally Blender would switch from polygonated to smoothed. *Adding a point light doesn't fix either. In the image, same model in Blender: Coppercube export on the left, Original on the right. Looks exactly the same in Coppercube, original is really smooth, while the model I worked in Coppercbue looks blocky... https://i.postimg.cc/xdCdkHj8/Copper-Cube-CUserspeter-Desktop-Humanoid-Costumes1-ccb.jpg Any other ideas or a way to re-smooth the normals, without affecting the geometry/polycount/UV map? Thanks! |
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veganpete wrote: The issue I'm having is this: I loaded a model to use the CC polygon editor to make changes to it. I then exported and upload to mixamo to animate it, the problem is that the mesh seems to be getting trashed by coppercube's fbx exporter. I don't think CopperCube has FBX exporter, it only exports static object to .STL, .DAE and .OBJ format and Irrlicht mesh. Is there any FBX exporter in CC? Also how does the model look without any lighting? I mean with static lights does the model appears smooth? or maybe if you don't have any issue you can share the sample model to test with CC. |
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Thanks for all the help with this people. I've spent a long time crunching away at this after watching the video posted by cristian_emz. I (think) I've managed to fix it today (in Blender) using Robo's original suggestion. In older versions, I was used to simply clicking "shade smooth" button to smooth the model, but in the newer versions of bender, this doesn't seem to work as intended; instead you now have to click the model, click the "object data properties", click "Normals", uncheck "auto-smooth", then select "object mode", then click "object", then click "shade-smooth". It will then smooth the model as expected. Not sure why - but if I don't do this first, the model will remain jagged when I click "shade smooth" in blender. Thanks just_in_case You're completely correct as usual, it's Coppercubes "obj" exporter I'm using, then it's getting converted to FBX by mixamo. Coppercube does not have an FBX exporter, I got confused and made a mistake. To reiterate - if I just use mixamo directly with the original model, it looks perfectly smooth when imported as fbx into coppercube - however, if I use coppercube's polygon editor first, then export as obj (to upload to mixamo) it looks trashed when I import back to coppercube as fbx. just_in_case The model just looks completely flat (2D) without any lighting. It looks jagged with Static or dynamic lighting. Sure, I have no problem sharing any of my files. When it's completely finished, I had intended to share the model and all the textures with the community anyway: Here's a pack with the ccb file, the original model and the coppercube model.obj with the trashed shading - a 3rd model is starting to get trashed (even without it ever leaving the coppercube scene)...... https://drive.google.com/file/d/... Still not too sure why it's losing the smoothing in coppercube - possibly because I'm changing the model geometry with the polygon editor by "creating mesh from selected - then merging that new mesh with the existing mesh it was cut from? The only reason I need to do edit the mesh at all is because when I try edit the models UV in coppercube polygon editor (to add a custom texture to the model) - whomever made the original model joined it together in such a way that there is a symmetry applied to the textures so I can't line them up with the model. I tried unwrapping the UV and editing the seams, even tried removing all seams and creating anew material for each section of the model. In the end, the only way i could fix it was to deconstruct and reconstruct the model inside coppercube itself - face-by-face, lol - so kudos to coppercube there. so, hopefully now, the new exported obj model from coppercube can be smoothed in blender and re-imported, then I'm back on track for making the costumes/skins for the characters and everything is sorted. Thank you all! |
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Ughhh, I spoke too soon! Blender's Shade smoothing still wont work on the exported coppercube model.obj I noticed that adding a modifier (in blender), using "radial mode" and "auto-smooth" settings enabled, does help a little bit but it's not perfect at all. I also noticed that coppercube seems to be adding extra faces (either while editing the polgons or when exporting - maybe it's triangulating the model faces?)...If I "recalculate the normals" in coppercube - Ican see the difference between the model faces lon the original model, compared to the faces of the model that has been exported from coppercube. Recalculated Normals: Coppercube export on left - Original model on right Still open to suggestions :'( |
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Yay - finally fixed it - I used the "Weld Faces" option in UltimateUnwrap3DPro (probably Blender can do it too) and the smooth-shading has come back when importing back to Coppercube! I think the issue was caused by me just snapping the polygon-points together in coppercube - which is not the same a welding the edges of the faces together when it comes to lighting. Now I guess it can calculate dynamic-lighting for the entire mesh, instead of each individual face. This could be a fix for anyone else who encounters the same problem with blocky lighting - make a backup, then try welding the edges in a 3D software and reload the model in coppercube. Having said that - this now seems to be a solid short-cut way of texturing smooth, very low-poly character models directly in coppercube (with photos for clothing) without them looking blocky. So glad we manage to get this working! It's a real game-changer for me as the character obj file and packed texture files are tiny. Using low poly will definitely help to improve the run-speed of my games. Just need to finish editing the polygons now and then will continue making a finished character to upload for people to look at properly. Will make a video tutorial for anyone interested. |
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Finally got round to doing a quick tutorial on this. You can make super low poly assets (I use PicoCad) and coppercube will make them look perfectly smooth and rounded (like high-poly models) using the normal data. If you ever edit a model using coppercube's polygon editor (or other 3D apps), you'll notice that the model loses it's smooth shading (even if you recalculate normals/tangents). This video shows a quick way to fix it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=... |
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Thanks VP, I subscribed your youtube channel! |
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Thanks andgameplay - there's not too much stuff on my channel but I may add more in the future. |
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Thanks a lot, @VP for the video tutorial. This is something really useful when dealing with low-poly games. |
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You're welcome just_in_case, it's something I encounter a lot and it's such an easy fix once you know how to do it - but it makes a massive difference to the appearance of the models when using dynamic lighting. The fix even works on animated/rigged meshes. Personally, I think Coppercube does a great job at making low-poly models look really smooth and nice, I think it uses the normal-weighting or tangents (something like that - similar to blenders smooth/flat view) to be able to calculate the dynamic lighting correctly? There is a built-in coppercube "recalculate tangents and normals" which does work well - but it can't seem to fix the normals if the polygons have been moved in the polygon editor. There's another thing I discovered yesterday too - to dramatically reduce the size of the animations for rigged characters (without affecting the quality) - but I just have to check that it still works once the model is imported to coppercube - It may be that coppercube already uses the same technique to optimise animation - in which case, my method will have no benefit at all. If it works though, I'll post a video of how to do it. It's a very simple trick which some people will already know. |
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