I’ve been battling to import models from C4D into UE4 and was hoping someone out there had found a solution to this, and would be able to share a working workflow for getting models into UE4 that work. Below are two issues, the one I have kind of worked out, the other i’m still battling with.
**Smooth Surfaces and Face Material Inconsistency **
Still whenever I import my model from C4D (Exported as FBX 2013) I get a error warning that there are no Smoothing Groups defined - and a whole lot of “face material index inconsistency - forcing to 0” messages (it seems one for every polygonal face)
://i.imgur/YRATsUH.png
SMOOTHING
This was with getting UE4 to calculate Normals and Tangents, the curves get faceted and seem to lose any smoothing
://i.imgur/a3Tv9Ug.jpg
If I set the import setting to Import Normals and Tangents, the model comes in with the smoothing and generally looks much better.
://i.imgur/OW9dbLY.jpg
Building Light, and Light Maps
However, with the new smoothed object now in place, when I build the lighting I get weird results along with a message that the UV lightmaps are overlapping (and a percentage) which results in the object getting improper lighting that looks like camouflage? WT*? Does anyone know what the issue is?
://i.imgur/gIeXxEV.jpg
The object really is not that complex, a simple Tube primitive converted to editable object in C4D. I would really appreciate your tips and help on this one.
Is anyone else experiencing issues with light maps on C4D objects. Take a look at these screens, although the light build runs ok, the shadows appear very weird on the surfaces, especially with regards to the staircase. One can also see a clear seam along the outer tube. Is this something to do with lightmap texture size?
UE 4’s lighting needs a few tweaks, that’s right but you can make it work most of the time.
A few tips on tweaking lighting issues:
As was said before, create a second UV channel for the lighting (and dont forget to set the index to the new channel!)
For the light mapping UVs, try to have the UV islands not too close together and not too close to the edge
Objects that have too many polys might need to be split up to get the lighting on them right
Try to increase the light map resolution (this fixes lighting issues very often), e.g. try 512, 1024, 2048, 4096 if necessary (and as low as possible for performance’s sake)
If you’re using a light module in a particle system, keep in mind that they don’t have shadows and thus will bleed through walls and such
By the way: I have similar issues with C4D’s FBX export - and not just when pushing stuff over to UE4. I assume C4D’s FBX export is messed up a bit.
As IMX said check that UE4 is not using the wrong UV map it seems it sometimes uses UV0 just cause it wants to, Unity always does light mapping in UV1 which is a little easier.
The Smoothing thing though, now I am doing more work on it, I think its a UE4 bug. I have spent years working with C4D and Unity and since R13/14 we have had smoothing groups working between apps. I think UE4 is not seeing them as it expects to. I’ll report a bug with an example mesh.
Firstly does the naming of the UV maps/channels in C4D effect how UE4 sees the light map? And how do you set the lightmap resolution in Cinema4D? I have produced the unwraps but havent actually created a texture as such for the uv, is this a problem?
IMX, please explain the setting of index to a new channel. (sorry if this is a noob question)
Here are some screengrabs of the UV maps. The big tube I can see being an issue as it is quite a large object in the scene - also, I suppose trying to get it to unwrap like a label off a cola bottle would be better than these pieces it gave?
Big Tube
://i.imgur/gmnnZAF.png
Stairs
://i.imgur/c85VI67.png
Walls
://i.imgur/IbxzSMK.png
Platforms
://i.imgur/IRQrphv.png
Lastly, I have noticed that when I export FBX from Maya UE4 cannot read it because the FBX version is too advanced! Maya is using FBX 2014 and UE4 is still on FBX 2013
Ok! I figured out the light mapping issues. For some reason UE4 default light map texture size it 32… 32! :eek:
After opening the model in UE4 editor, on the right hand side panel I upped the light map sizes for the level objects to 512 and this is the result. I’m much happier with this now - still a few minor issues here and there, but nowhere near as bad as it was before. Thanks guys for all your help.
://i.imgur/VhVmtfj.jpg
://i.imgur/jeTToj2.jpg
My new chest asset I made for the game, came into UE4 like a dream.
You can successfully export from Maya 2014 or 2015 by changing your FBX export settings to use the 2013.3 FBX version which is only supported by UE4. The same goes for the latest versions of . You can also use the free standalone Autodesk 2013.3 FBX exporter, found here
