Normals rotated on some faces when I import mesh

[illYay]

I have a mesh whose normals are importing mostly correctly except for the parts that make up 2 rounded “cylindrical” bits.

My only fix right now is using the “Recompute Normals” option which I was trying to avoid, assuming my normals are exported correctly from Maya. Is it generally recommended to leave “Recompute Normals” on? I’d think it’d be better to always trust the modeling program. I also tried exporting with z up in the fbx settings. My maya scene is set to Y up which is the default and I keep it that way for various reasons. (Too many things break in my experience when switching to Z up)

They’re definitely correct in Maya though. This is me visualizing normals on the fbx itself that I reimported into Maya.

I’m not sure how unreal just magically makes only these faces have normals rotated 90 degrees.

It’s not messing up these normals and they’re all “smooth” so it’s not an issue with smooth normals.

[illYay]

OK I seem to have fixed it by going nuclear on the meshes in Maya. I removed the skinning info and deleted history, then redid the skinning. (Luckily this is trivial because this is for a low poly gun)

After all of that, the normals import correctly into Unreal. I must’ve had something weird in the history.