Hi everybody,

Is there a possibility to turn off the Surface Normals while exporting to .obj or .lwo. Because it does not work well in Modo. It create very dark shadows on surfaces.
The only solution I have is deleting the surface normals in Modo.

Hi Reggy, there is not currently any option for turning off writing out vertex normals to .obj or .lwo formats.

Using the vertex normals for shading is a key part for making renders work well, there are a lot of shading artifacts that you can get if you remove them.

Are you possibly doing some kind of transformation operation on objects after you have imported them? It sounds like you might be doing something that is not transforming the normals. If you're transforming objects try doing it in object edit mode instead of point edit mode.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Thanks for replying that quick. Yes, shading artifacts is the consequence of removing the shading normals. My workaround is to inset a additional face.
It occurs with cubes. Even when a light hits the surface, it stays black, while the face in the shadow is brighter..
By the way, I don't transform any of those cube-like object.

But maybe it's a Modo issue, I don't know. So I'm gonna place this in the Modo forum too.
For your info, I'm doing a archviz which contains a lot of cubes-like objects, all modeled in Moi3D and render out in Modo.


- Reggy

Hi Reggy, what do you have set in MoI under Options > Import/Export > LWO options > "Vertex normals style" ?



- Michael

Hi Michael,

It’s set to Modo 501. I should try Modo 601 / Lightwave v10 or Lightwave v9.6.
Didn’t know these preference. Thanks, I’m gonna give it a try and let you know the results.

Wow, thanks a lot, Michael! I set it on Modo 601 / Lightwave 10, and it solved the problem.
This saves me a lot of work. Thanks again!

That's great Reggy, I'm glad you're working ok now!

- Michael