Exported normals

[martinni]

Here at work we have found an issue with the normals of the lowpoly models exported from 3d coat. I have created a simple test with a chamfered box that illustrates the problem, see the attached picture below:

The model on the right is the one imported into 3d coat, it is unwrapped and its normals are not modified. I am inserting it to create a high poly voxmodel and then again importing it in the retoporoom from where I bake the normalmap. When I export the model again after baking, the normals look like they do on the left model in the picture. The result is that the baked normalmap does not work properly on the original model, but only on the model exported from the 3d coat because of the differences in smoothing caused by the normals.

I think the issue is caused by 3d coat modifying the normals of the lowpoly model before baking, I guess this is done to get less shading on the polys that the normalmap has to negate? Is there any way to disable this feature when baking if it is needed for special cases? I tried using smooth uvsets and create auto smoothing groups with 180degree angles, but I got the same normals no matter what.

[artman]

Send this to Andrew with attached images at support@3d-coat.com

I think you will have super fast answer and solution because your problem is very clear and well explained.

On the forum it might take longer.

[martinni]

Send this to Andrew with attached images at support@3d-coat.com

I think you will have super fast answer and solution because your problem is very clear and well explained.

On the forum it might take longer.

Yeah, but I thought this was relevant info for everyone else so I kept it to the forum