A little background on where I’m coming from:
I’m a graphics programmer, not an artist. We’re using a contract artist who’s using Max 3.1 to create models for us. He exports them into some format, and I import them into Blender, define any properties or tweak anything I need to, then export to the format we use (which happens to be Ogre meshes). I’m using Blender 2.37a (and I’m a Blender novice).
I had him try exporting to .3ds, and I imported that. The problem is, I’m not getting smoothing info. He has smoothing groups defined in Max, but when I import the .3ds file into Blender, it’s faceted.
I know I can use SetSmooth in Blender, but that applies to the entire model. Ultimately what I need is this: The artist defines specific smoothing in Max, exports to some format, I import this in Blender, export to an Ogre mesh, and the vertex normals in the Ogre mesh are correct based on the initial smoothing defined in Max.
My questions are:
Is there a format Max can export and Blender can import that will retain the smoothing info? Or if Max exports to something with explicit vertex normals defined, can Blender import this? Does Blender deal with explicit vertex normals, or does it always want to generate the normals itself?
I had him try exporting to .3ds, and I imported that. The problem is, I’m not getting smoothing info. He has smoothing groups defined in Max, but when I import the .3ds file into Blender, it’s faceted.
I’m not 100% certain, but I don’t think 3ds supports that type of info. It’s just a bare bones mash. It might support normals (I know OBJ files support normals and UVs), but I don’t think that would fix your problem. Blender doesn’t use smoothing groups. Best results would probably be achieved by setting it to smooth, adding a subdivision modifer, and then setting the sharpness of the edges you don’t want smooth.
Just to clarify what I’m looking for here: I’m not trying to figure out how to do smoothing/normals in Blender. I’m trying to figure out how to get the smoothing already specified in Max imported into Blender (so I don’t have to do it, since the contract artist has already done it in Max).
Have him use the “Export selected” rather than the “Export” menu item. He can then export the object to an OBJ file with the options to also export the smoothing groups and the normals as well as the option to export as a quad mesh. I know that Blender does respect the smoothing groups, but I have no idea how accurate it reproduces what this guy has created in Max. (Also, Max’s scale is huge compared to Blender. You may want him to scale it down when he exports)