Importing as a skeletal mesh changes the normals or smoothing of objects

Development Rendering
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21

Thank you so much for finding this!
I would vote for having that setting as default. I assume most artists are very aware of their normals and want them to look the same as in DCC.

22

Hi there!
You can try to change “Normal import Method” from “Compute normals” to “Import Normals” and reimport mesh.

Here my model with computed normals

341747-computen.png
341747-computen.png1028×894 507 KB

And there with imported

341748-importn.png
341748-importn.png1021×898 495 KB

Hope it was helpful

1 Like
23

I have the same problem as described above. I’ve been trying to find a solution for two days now. I export from Houdini. When I import the same file as a “static mesh” - the normals are correct, when I import it as a “skeletal mesh” - the normals are broken. Of course, when importing, I use “Import Normals” method.

Screenshot “00”

For exporting from Houdini I tried to use both “rop_fbx_output” and “rop_fbxcharacter_output” nodes .

The result of exporting the model using these nodes is different. Only when I use just “rop_fbx_output” node and import it as a static mesh, everything is imported good without warnings and the geometry looks great (except smoothing groups missing warning, but it is okay for Houdini).

When I import the same file as “Skeletal Mesh” picking the existing skeleton - I see a warnings you can see in the picture below. In the viewport, normals are broken and animation doesn’t work.

Screenshot “01”

Sometimes these warnings (I have tried to export and import with different settings dozens of times):

Screenshot “02”
Screenshot “03”

When I export via “rop_fbxcharacter_output” node and import as Static Mesh - I have a warning you can see below. The geometry has flat polygons - no smoothing at all.

Screenshot “04”

And when I import it as a “Skeletal Mesh” - there are no warnings (except SmoothingGroupsMissing), animation works fine, but the normals are broken!!! I don’t know what to do. Please help me if you can somehow :slight_smile:

Just in case, I export packed geometry with “Normals Attribute” written on “Vertex Level”:

Screenshot “05”

As I understood, I can’t import screenshots directly into the post, because I am a “new user” on the forum. So all screenshots are here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11Dh84YC-6KddG14km302vYoD2YWcBhjh?usp=sharing

24

I don’t know if this still helps you, but if not, maybe the next person who has this issue will find it.
I’ve been using houdini to build destructible meshes (which sort of technically work as skeletal meshes, I think), and was having issues with broken normals.

The solution turned out to be unlocking the RBD to FBX node. I changed the fbx export to 2016, but crucially turning on ‘compute smoothing groups’.