Blender to 3ds Max: Smoothing groups don't work as expected

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Hi guys,

I have to use 3ds Max to export meshes into our game, because we have a custom export plugin especially for Max. But neither fbx nor obj export the sharp edges in a way I can work with them. Here’s a picture of an obj export:

smoothingproblem.jpg860×410 27.9 KB

The blender mesh is on the left, with sharp edges and an edge split modifier. When I export this mesh (without applying the edge split modifier, so my edges don’t break) I get different smoothing groups in Max for faces that share an edge, which is what I want. But the smoothing groups still touch at the corner vertices (right picture - the selected faces have the same smoothing group). For correct smoothing, faces with different smoothing groups shouldn’t touch at all, not even at their corners.

The only work around I came up with is to finish the mesh in Blender, set up the smoothing groups in Max and then export it. But that’s no real solution because every time I change something in the Blend file I have to redo the smoothing groups in Max.

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2

Just in case someone stumbles over this thread via Google, I’ve found a solution. Here’s how:

Export from Blender

  • Use the same units in Blender and in Max (in my case meters)
  • Apply rotation and scale
  • Set all faces to Shade Smooth, mark your sharp edges, enable Auto Smooth and set it to 180°
  • Export as FBX with the following settings:

Main

  • Scale 1
  • Forward: Y Forward
  • Up: Z Up

Geometries

  • Smoothing: Edge

Import in Max

  • Activate Smoothing Groups in the Geometry tab
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3

Thank you for the information I was also having this problem. But the bad thing about using fbx is that all the uvs that shares the same space get merged when I import them into 3dsmax. Do you have this problem? How could I solve it?. I dont have this kind of problem with obj export.