Normals of a dts flipped upon export... what the hell?
by Adam deGrandis · in Artist Corner · 05/29/2004 (5:01 am) · 2 replies
I have a character that, with much appreciated help from community members, I finally got to export. Except there is a strange error with it. The normals have been flipped. The inside of the mesh is what is visible and gets lit. The outside is effectively invisible.
Like I said before, its a character. It was built from a character studio biped. I *think* (and this is just wild speculation) that it may have to do with bip01 being included in the export. The model was originally a editable polygon, so I had to save the skin, change the model to an editable mesh, reapply the skin modifier, and the load the previous skin setup. After that, some of the vertices were weighted to the bip01 node. I unweighted them, but it was still saying "cannot compile bip01 becuase it is a bone" or something to that effect. So i took out bip01 from the NeverExport list in my .cfg. So does anyone know... is flipped normals a result of exporting the bip01.
or i guess a better question would be "why should we never export bip01?".
and back to the issue at hand, does anyone know what is going on with the normals?
Like I said before, its a character. It was built from a character studio biped. I *think* (and this is just wild speculation) that it may have to do with bip01 being included in the export. The model was originally a editable polygon, so I had to save the skin, change the model to an editable mesh, reapply the skin modifier, and the load the previous skin setup. After that, some of the vertices were weighted to the bip01 node. I unweighted them, but it was still saying "cannot compile bip01 becuase it is a bone" or something to that effect. So i took out bip01 from the NeverExport list in my .cfg. So does anyone know... is flipped normals a result of exporting the bip01.
or i guess a better question would be "why should we never export bip01?".
and back to the issue at hand, does anyone know what is going on with the normals?
About the author
I'm an veteran game artist, teacher, and all around nice guy. Check out my portfolio at adamdegrandis.com.
#2
I had a model that had flipped normals, and this trick saved the UV mapping (I had not skinned yet so nothing was lost)
01/19/2008 (10:43 am)
Thanks for this =)I had a model that had flipped normals, and this trick saved the UV mapping (I had not skinned yet so nothing was lost)
Torque Owner Matthew Jones
You should always reset the Xform of a model then drop a normals modifier on it and "Unify" the normals of your model. Or wrap the model with a box "editable mesh", attach the existing model to it and delete the Elemant of the box. Either way insures the normals are as they appear in the viewport.
The Mirror tools shows the model as mirror image from side to side but in actual fact it is a total oppisite normals and all.
This is typical no matter what game engine you use.
To avoid this use the "Symetry" modifier.
Next peice of bad news.
If you copy/paste a skin modifier from one object to the next especially from an editable-poly to an editable-mesh your data within the skin modifier gets lost or changed. No matter whether or not you delete a bone from the "Skin" modifiers list the data is still there upon export and will throw the error.
Delete the skin modifier and re build it. This is mentioned in the DTS docs.
If the the biped01 gets listed in the skin modifiers bone list then you have pretty much messed the model up for good. The DTS exporter sees biped01 as a helper node. Which in fact it is and should never be included in a skin modifier bone list. It is primarlaly used for a root node when using physique.(no good with Torque)
Sorry
Matthew Jones