Material smoothing

[vandigital]

Stuff that I import doesn't have any smoothing, there seem to be no material settings for it either. How do you smooth your objects?

[Hasenjager]

Hi vandigital,

Smoothing in MODO is done by hitting Tab, or Shift+Tab for a Catmull-Clark smoothed mesh.

Hope this helps.

[vandigital]

No im not talking about sub dividing a mesh. I am talking about material smoothing.

[vladimir.nedev]

The "smoothing" and "smoothing angle" options in the modo material are not supported by V-Ray right now.

In the "Vertex map" menu there is a "Set vertex normals" command (near the bottom), which will create a vertex normals map which you can edit.
http://docs.luxology.com/modo/801/he...exNormals.html
Editing is done using the "split normals" tool.
http://docs.luxology.com/modo/701/he...itNormals.html
It seemed to give very strange results in my tests though.

When importing geometry, the importer might create such a map, and mess up the normals. You can try checking the "Vertex Map List" view-port,
then "Other maps" and see if there is a "vertex normal map" there. Try deleting it and see if that fixes the normals.

What file format are you using when importing geometry into modo ? I think our 3d guys have used "obj" to import geometry, when converting
some sample scenes. I think fbx didn't quite work for them when importing geometry. They used fbx only to import the location of lights/cameras.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[vladimir.nedev]

You can also use the Geometry -> Polygon -> Set smoothing group command.

http://docs.luxology.com/modo/501/he...olygonSet.html

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[vladimir.nedev]

So I read a little bit more about this. Basically the "set vertex normals" command will bake the current vertex normals
of whatever polygons are selected into the vertex normals map. So you modify the smoothing properties in
the material, select polygons that need to have that smoothing, hit "set vertex normals", repeat for other polygons.

This video explains it http://the3dninja.com/blog/?p=1769

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[vandigital]

I would recommend staying away from tying vray functions into modo materials. That's really counter intuitive.

If I am creating a project to render in vray the last thing I want to do is add more complexity to my scene with double the materials. That's confusing when features are spread in two material types. When I create a material for vray I want just the vray material, not some stuff from modo materials and some from vray materials.

I imported an FBX from 3ds Max there were no normals attached, so the result you get in vray is a very faceted render even though the count is very high and the mesh dense. Further subdividing of the mesh would be insane.

[vladimir.nedev]

That's just the way smooth/faceted normals are defined in modo when using the "Set vertex normals" command.
Once we implement it, we can add the "smooth" options in the V-Ray material, but I am not sure modo will pick them
up when using the "Set vertex normals" command.

Try exporting/importing an "obj" file. That may help.
By the way, does the modo render look ok for the same mesh that looks faceted in V-Ray ?

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[vandigital]

Yes its smooth in modo, faceted in vray.

[vladimir.nedev]

Exporting with obj from 3ds Max doesn't seem to have that problem. There is no need for additional smoothing from the material in that case.

So I took a look at what's going on. It seems modo actually uses the "smoothing" and "smoothing angle" from the material
before giving the vertex normals to V-Ray. So I guess in your case using modo's own material with V-Ray works, right ?
There is a way to specify these smooth parameters for custom materials (like the V-Ray material), and it does work,
BUT modo doesn't automatically pick up the change to the smoothing angle in that case. You have to explicitly
disable/enable the material for example to make the normals update. Saving and then reloading the scene also forces
modo to take the new value. I will ask our Foundry guy if they can provide help with this, but they don't usually
answer very fast so it may take time.

This change will be in tomorrow's nightly build (date 20140829). The "texture layers" tab for V-Ray materials will have the "smoothing" and "smoothing angle"
options. When you change them you have to disable/enable the material to have the change take effect in the view-port, and then you can render.

The nightly builds use the dongle license, you can ask support for access to them.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[vandigital]

Interesting, thats a easier work around than baking and all that (not modo's strong suite there). So that will be fine for now. Thanks for getting that in there quickly!.