Hi Anton,

> Even like the users in the comments I would def agree that
> there has to be something for switching on/off the export of
> this vertex-map in the export dialog which really makes no
> sense in modo and could disturb newbies, as there is a toggle
> function for smoothing in Modo by default.

But that's definitely not true that the vertex map "makes no sense" in Modo - it's actually very important to get the vertex map to come through into Modo in order to get the best quality shading.

If you don't get the vertex map through, then instead Modo will create vertex normals for smoothing by just averaging the normals of surrounding poly faces. This tends to create shading glitches. The vertex normals that MoI writes out on the other hand come from the original NURBS surface, so using those for shading helps to keep the shading look exactly the same as the original NURBS object.

There are still some bugs in Modo in vertex normal handling when editing geometry though, which hopefully they will fix at some point. Some operations such as flipping should also flip the vertex normals but currently do not, and some other kinds of operations that alter the mesh's shape should actually delete the vertex normal map (since the vertex normals are only meant to go with one particular mesh shape) but they don't.

But for doing a regular rendering, you usually will want to have the vertex normals come through, it's the way that you get the best quality shading and have the object look the same as the original NURBS object.

- Michael