Normal Problem on Walls

Development Architectural and Design Visualization
1

Hello everyone,

I’m at my first “solo” project in UE.I am experiencing some issues when importing walls in UE.
I am trying to make a presentation for a project i did in Archicad.Of course Archicad does not support .fbx, just .obj, but can’t change pivot in AC so no good.
This was my workflow so far:
-export to 3ds Max
-separate everything based on collisions
-unwrap uv and flatten uv’s on both chanels
-export as .fbx - (i had selected :smoothing groups, turbosmooth, triangulate and preserve edge orientation - everything else default)
-before exporting i checked the normals, but they seemed ok to me (pic attached)
You can see the effect of the import in the other picture.

Can anyone please tell me what i did wrong?

Thank you in advance.
Dan

2

It looks to me like your face is flipped. Select that face in 3DS Max and use the flip button to invert it.

3

Thank you Steve, it was indeed that.
Problem solved.

4

I see many people are having this issue. It’s very simple to see where the flipped polygons are: select the object, click with right mouse button on viewport, enter the “object properties” menu, search under “Display properties” for “Backface Cull”, turn this checkox on and voila. This way you can see single sided geometry like in UE4. It surprises me that people doesn’t know about it… Way to see flipped polygons shown in this video is just stupid…

P.S. I have few more tips for you, while I’m at it. Do not divide everything based on collision, but based on lightmaps. UE4 creates one lightmap per object, keep that in mind. And for walls do not create UCX, or standard collision, instead use collision by polygon (complex as simple).
Oh, and another thing to keep in mind is the scale, while you’re importing obj files into 3ds max, check if it’s right, usually is not (well, depending on what software obj was created). And of course check if scale is fine inside UE4, see the discussion I made here recently with other guys:

The problem is the camera that cannot be scaled down, so all seems like a miniature. It’s very important to nail those things BEFORE you start the actual project, since later changing all that will be a big mess.

Cheers, happy modeling and good luck with your project.

5

Thanks for the tips.

6

No problem :wink: Actually I’m working on interactive ArchViz project too, and instead of working I’m lurking around forums, hehe :stuck_out_tongue:

Cheers, if you have any questions regarding 3ds max or importing models to UE4 just ask, I will gladly help.