Smoothing group not working?

Development Rendering
1

Hey guys,

I’m either not understanding what a smoothing group is, or am doing something wrong.

can.jpg
can.jpg1156×888 114 KB

Here is my beautiful watering can. As I understand it, a smoothing group should be blending the geometry, making the can look at little smoother. That’s obviously not happening.

I’m modeling in MODO. To save the smoothing group, I selected all of the geometry and then clicked Vertex map > Create… I left the settings as is and saved the it as a Weight map. I know it is coming into UE4, as I stopped receiving the “no smoothing group” error when importing.

So, is there a way to get some smoother looking geometry?

Thanks!

As an aside, my bump map also seems to be reversed from what it is in MODO. Did I do something wrong there?

2

Hello Ian!
You have to assign values from vertex map to your actual vertices!

  1. Enable vertex normal display(Top Menu - View - Show Vertex Normals)
  2. Create vertex normal map(At right side of the screen in Lists tab press Other Maps - New map - Vertex Normal Map)
  3. Bake data from vertex normal map into your vertices(Top Menu - Vertex Map - Set Vertex Normals)
  4. Now you clearly can see your normals/smoothing groups and export it!

EDIT: Try to invert Y channel for bump map, different engines have different “standards” of normals map and you have to tweak some stuff to make perfect transition

3

Thanks, zeOrb! Huge help. My watering can is now beautifully smooth.

Now, inverting the Y channel: do I do that in UE or MODO?