Hi Wedgie, the way I do it from IGES to Modo is more or less the same as you. Saving as LWO, Weld vertices ticked, angel 6. divide larger than 5. In Modo I delete all in "Other Maps" put all layers in one and move the pivot to where I like to have it. Only dubblesided material and with a Smoothing Angle to 10 degrees. Then there is no problem to animate it.
Good Luck
Chestnut

Hi Wedgie - so yeah the vertex normals that come from the vertex normal map are used to shade a mesh with light sources. So if your mesh geometry is transformed but the vertex normals just stay in their same orientation it will make a weird effect where the object gets shaded as if it hadn't moved.

If I remember right, Modo will transform the vertex normal map along with the object only if you are in "Item" mode when doing the transformation.

So that's probably the key thing to look for - what mode are you in when doing the transform for the mesh spin? If you're in vertex mode or face mode or whatever, try instead being in item mode and see if that works for you.

It would be nice if Modo would transform the normals in other modes as well if the entire object was actually being transformed anyway (like if all vertices were being transformed in vertex mode, etc...) maybe that's something they can improve in Modo in the future.

- Michael

Hi Chestnut,

> <....>
> In Modo I delete all in "Other Maps"

If you're going to do a "rigid body" animation where the object is just being moved, rotated & scaled (instead of bent or flexed or something like that), it can help to get better quality shading to keep the vertex normal map instead of deleting it. Make sure you're doing transforms in Item mode though.

If you delete the vertex map, Modo will instead switch to use automatically calculated vertex normals which are created by averaging the face normals of all the faces shared by a vertex. That kind of a system is ok if you've got pretty regularly sized and shaped polygons but if you have stuff like a large polygon next to a small one (which is easy to have in mechanical type models), that kind of averaging tends to make for shading glitches. The normals stored in the vertex normal map that MoI exports come from the original NURBS surface, so they're higher quality than the ones averaged just from polygon faces. If you can use the original ones they will help to keep your polygon model shading looking exactly the same as the original NURBS model and free of shading glitches.

- Michael

Thanks for the feedback. It seems to be the consensus that the shading issue is coming from the fact that I may not be in item mode then setting up the animation. The way I have it set up at the moment is the geometry is a child item of a locator that is being animated. When I select the locator, to change its properties, I am in item mode. Selecting the last frame in the animation I type in a new value in the "Y" channel (-360) and that's it done. As I understood it this is the correct way to animate a "turntable spin”. Is there a different way to do it that will solve my problem?
Thanks so much

W

Hi Michael, will try to keep the vertex maps next time. Thanks for the information.

Hi Wedgie, you can only animate in Item mode in Modo, the way you are setting up the turntable spin is ok as far as I know. Pl put up the file for downloading and I will have a look.
Chestnut

Here is the file, please let me know what you think. Make sure you have a look at the .mov file I attached to my first post.
Thanks

Hi Wedgie & Chestnut - I'm actually not familiar with animating in Modo myself, so that was more relayed information from what others have told me before, that if you're not in Item mode when doing transforms you can run into problems with the vertex normal map not getting transformed along with the object.

What version of Modo are you using, Wedgie?

Another thing you might try is converting your object to a Modo "static mesh" type object instead of a regular mesh. I think that will triangulate it and make it not editable in all the same ways as a regular mesh like point squishing, but that may transform the normals better.

- Michael

Hi Felix,

Sorry for the delay, had a lot of works this week.
So I have take some time to check your scene, models etc,
and there is indeed something wrong with the shading.



So here a view of the actual model, with vertex on and off.
The shading of the first image is not right according to the lighting.



Now I did a fresh export from MoI with the model you send me, and everything seems right with the vertex map.

So my conclusion, is that at some point during the animation setup, you probably rotate, scale, moved the model, or part of the model, in poly/vertex/edge editing mode.
As Michael said, any transformation in modo has to be done in Item mode, otherwise the vertex map dont match the model anymore.

So I would suggest to redo the setup from scratch. The original .lwo you send me is looking right, but I will probably suggest to tesselate it a little bit higher to avoid
raytrace shadow problem.

Try to match the right scaling in MoI so you dont have to rescale the model in modo.
And really pay attention to only use the Item mode when moving/setuping you scene.

»» Another thing you might try is converting your object to a Modo "static mesh" type object instead of a regular mesh
The problem with static mesh is that you also kill every uv maps, can be annoying to add decals and the like.

Thanks guys let me try that and get back to you.
Cheers

W

Ok, that did the trick. I have attached a quick and dirty render so you can see.
I re-imported the LWO file again, all the parts of the model came in as separate mesh items, I did not convert them to static meshing as I need to UV a couple of parts, like the button on the front panel.
The items that wouldn't be seen I deleted, this left me with about 9 mesh items in Modo. I could have cut and pasted them all into one mesh item but then it became tricky to select the different mesh parts for applying materials. Double clicking a mesh part, like the face plate, for example, wouldn't select the entire mesh as most of the meshes were not continuous. Even after merging vert’s there were still issues, setting the merge range too high would destroy geometry, in some of the finer detailed areas. The statistics tab and filtering polygons by imported material didn't help either as it only listed the material for the entire model. The easiest way around this was to keep the parts on their own item/layer and apply the materials to everything in that layer. To reposition the model in item mode is a problem when the meshes are in separated layers and all the pivots and centers are all over the place, however, if you place the mesh items in a group locator, then select the group locator in item mode, and reposition it, all the mesh items follow with their relative positions preserved and the vert. map info preserved. Place the group locator inside a locator item, that is animated, makes the whole model spin, you’re done. It wasn't necessary to have the meshes in "Static" mode or to delete the vert. map, found under lists/other maps; I did delete the imported UV maps, as they were usable.
This is the first time I have attempted something like of thing. I am a photographer and in the past we would hot glue the object to be animated to a "Lazy Suzanne" (a platform that spins) and take a photograph every 10 degree's. As it's almost impossible to get the product to sit perfectly perpendicular to the axis of rotation there was always a wobble that has to be manually tweaked out in. Now I have a better understanding of the methodology involved here, with the file conversions and all the potential pit falls along the way, this is a much better way to go. The biggest break through was a tip I got from Martin in the forum here regarding making sure the model is the correct scale before exporting the "do not transform in element mode". I will have to go back to the Modo forums and start a thread on this subject because I have never heard it mentioned in any of the training material out there.
Thanks all for your support.
W

Hi Wedgie,

> Double clicking a mesh part, like the face plate, for
> example, wouldn't select the entire mesh as most
> of the meshes were not continuous.

Another way you can control this is to set the object names within MoI (click on the name line in the properties panel that shows up in the upper right area of the window when you select objects).

If you have multiple objects all with the same name, they will all be combined together into one mesh object in the LWO file if the setting for it is enabled - the setting is under Options > Import/Export > "Combine same named objects". It is enabled by default.


That gives you a way to control mesh clustering in the export as a separate thing from material assignment - the style assignments in MoI will become material assignments in the LWO file.

- Michael