Second Life ignoring Blender's auto smoothing when multiple objects are joined

[Xennified]

Blender's auto-smoothing generally imports well enough (though not perfectly), but I've been having issues when I join multiple objects together where sometimes an object (or rather, what used to be an object) will be all sharp edges and I can't figure out why or what I'm doing wrong. I've tried not smoothing them in blender until after the objects are joined, and that didn't help. Everything looks fine in Blender and changing the auto-smoothing angle in Blender doesn't help either.

I don't really want to upload my models as huge linksets so if anyone knows what I'm doing wrong I would massively appreciate help. I'm still on Blender 2.79b if that changes anything, I'm still learning and didn't want a massive UI change throwing me off until I know what I'm doing.

Edit: Thought I'd got it when I remembered booleans exist but... Nope. It still does the same thing.

Edited May 19, 2022 by Xennified

[Aquila Kytori]

Hi

Can you share an example .blend file so that we can take a look and do a test upload ?    https://pasteall.org/blend/

[Xennified]

9 minutes ago, Aquila Kytori said:

Hi

Can you share an example .blend file so that we can take a look and do a test upload ?    https://pasteall.org/blend/

Hiya, here it is https://pasteall.org/blend/1a4ea87e30f6413ebbba28cbb25a2cdf

[Codex Alpha]

It is the booleans that you have used that have messed up your geometry. Since the verts aren't matching up, sharps applied and vertex normals are going to clash. In the file I see the cylinder shape is quite mishapen at the ends. There are ways to connect these objects together, if you really really really want to, just look up Blender Secrets or other on YT if you want to clean up the mesh with all the boolean verts

Model each piece seperately that way your sharps and normals will be fine.

then join them up into the same mesh.

If you have repeating elements like the arm and half-sphere, unwrap those first (and maybe even texture them) then duplicate two more times to finish your design.

And since each piece is it's own mesh, it is much easier to decimate later for LODs and such.

 

Edited May 19, 2022 by Codex Alpha

[Xennified]

9 minutes ago, Codex Alpha said:

It is the booleans that you have used that have messed up your geometry. Since the verts aren't matching up, sharps applied and vertex normals are going to clash. In the file I see the cylinder shape is quite mishapen at the ends. There are ways to connect these objects together, if you really really really want to, just look up Blender Secrets or other on YT if you want to clean up the mesh with all the boolean verts

Model each piece seperately that way your sharps and normals will be fine.

then join them up into the same mesh.

If you have repeating elements like the arm and half-sphere, unwrap those first (and maybe even texture them) then duplicate two more times to finish your design.

And since each piece is it's own mesh, it is much easier to decimate later for LODs and such.

 

As I said in the post, I tried joining them first. Have been testing and it turns out any cylinder created with only 8 sides will have hard edges when uploaded to SL regardless of any smoothness settings from blender, even without it being joined to another object.

[Xennified]

Okay, even weirder. I'm testing how low-poly a cylinder SL will smooth, anything under 12 sides will be all hard edges, but 12 has SOME smooth edges, and a few hard? This is without joining it to another object or anything.

So even without getting into whether I should boolean or join or whatever, something is very wrong here.

[Codex Alpha]

Pretty much whatever happens if you can see it in BLender, it shouldn't change in appearance in the uploader. Perhaps if you are exporting you may be applying a modifier somewhere, or on export to DAE, the auto triangulation is creating artifacts. in any case make sure your base mesh in Blender is clean and sound.

Check your autosmooth settings. Mine is around 60 degrees on average, if it was lower at 15 to 30 I might get those edges to look sharp too.

Edited May 19, 2022 by Codex Alpha

[Xennified]

8 minutes ago, Codex Alpha said:

Pretty much whatever happens if you can see it in BLender, it shouldn't change in appearance in the uploader. Perhaps if you are exporting you may be applying a modifier somewhere, or on export to DAE, the auto triangulation is creating artifacts. in any case make sure your base mesh in Blender is clean and sound.

Check your autosmooth settings. Mine is around 60 degrees on average, if it was lower at 15 to 30 I might get those edges to look sharp too.

Yeah I've been trying it at 60 degrees, have tried higher too and it doesn't change anything. Just tried the triangulate modifier on an otherwise unmodified 8-side cylinder, smoothing it in blender, and it's still all hard edges in SL.

Are you using a newer version of Blender? I'm going to try that next since someone in a group said they didn't have the issue on a newer version.

[Xennified]

Okay well... After struggling with Blender 3.1's UI I made a cylinder that would've been all hard edges when imported from Blender 2.79b, and the edges are all correctly smooth. Something about older versions of Blender just doesn't export auto smoothing properly, apparently. So I'm going to have to get used to this new UI.

[Aquila Kytori]

Just repeating everything Codex said :

 

Using Blender v 2.79.1

The boolean is causing creasing in the tubes and cups :

 

In the Uploader for some reason or other you have to enable generate Normals at around 50°

 

Edited May 19, 2022 by Aquila Kytori

[Aquila Kytori]

Yes you are correct. Something wrong with exporting smooth shading in2.79.

The smooth shading exports correctly (as expected) with Blender 3.10.

 

24 minutes ago, Xennified said:

So I'm going to have to get used to this new UI.

 

OMG how I struggled trying to work in v2.79 again.

The first couple of days will be frustrating learning the new UI etc but I am sure very soon you will begin to see just how much better the newer version is.

Let us know how you get on 

 

 

Edited May 19, 2022 by Aquila Kytori

[Chic Aeon]

33 minutes ago, Aquila Kytori said:

OMG how I struggled trying to work in v2.79 again.

You can't imagine how much I SMILED AT THAT!!!!!  

Still chuckling.  

 

BTW I spent WEEKS trying to adapt and was about ready to see if I liked "single malt" like in all the TV shows. Then aside from some Sansar poses threw in the towel. Not all of us are as adaptable as you think :D.   

Edited May 19, 2022 by Chic Aeon
adding info

[Codex Alpha]

I'm still cleaning up old files when I open them from 2.79 and prior.. It is a mess when opening into 2.8+ because of new Collections, so all the old layers are  missing their render buttons, etc have to go into it and reset it all. Not to mention old file layouts and settings, I gave up. Basically now if I want to revive something that is older, I just now append the objects into my new file instead and is much faster. Wasn't easy, and took a week to get used to it and back to full productivity again, but it is much nicer than older versions. Very jealous too haha that new Blender user have a nicer UI to learn it - while some of us were crazy enough to dive into it when it looked like an engineers panel "Ooops I hit a button somewhere and I don't know what happened..."

[Frionil Fang]

2 hours ago, Codex Alpha said:

I'm still cleaning up old files when I open them from 2.79 and prior.. It is a mess when opening into 2.8+ because of new Collections, so all the old layers are  missing their render buttons, etc have to go into it and reset it all. Not to mention old file layouts and settings, I gave up. Basically now if I want to revive something that is older, I just now append the objects into my new file instead and is much faster. Wasn't easy, and took a week to get used to it and back to full productivity again, but it is much nicer than older versions. Very jealous too haha that new Blender user have a nicer UI to learn it - while some of us were crazy enough to dive into it when it looked like an engineers panel "Ooops I hit a button somewhere and I don't know what happened..."

There's a "Load UI" checkbox in the operator toolbar for the open dialog (cog button/"N" hotkey) which allows you to discard the UI from any file and use the current one.

[Codex Alpha]

@Frionil Fang Holy cow! Thanks for the tip! Hahaha funny how I can noob out sometimes lol! I've unchecked Load UI in the past for files that weren't mine because people have some weird setups, but I didn't even think of doing this for my own 2.79 files.

Wow! Thanks so much, will save me a lot of time!

They still shut off these items, but having the layers go into auto collections saves a big step fo sho

Edited May 20, 2022 by Codex Alpha