Mirrored Mesh Uploading Grey (Maya)

[Jesseaitui Petion]

Hello,

What could be causing my mirrored mesh image to upload into SL as grey instead of white?
My original, unmirrored version, uploads as white.

Here are some images taken from the mesh upload preview screen:
Original Mesh:

 

Mirrored Mesh:

 

 

I believe I may need to toggle on/off some settings I am unaware of.
I flipped the mesh by doing the following:
1, Duplicate object and change offset to -1
2. Attempted upload to SL resulted in mesh inside out
3. Went to Polygons>Normals>Reverse to fix that
4. Uploading grey instead of white

 

I would appreciate any help, thanks!

[Landon Spot]

Okay, First off..It's not your er, Whatsit......Ambient Lighting is it? Are they textured or no?

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

I'm pretty sure that second model, the grey one IS inside out. It most certainly would cause the weird lighting. So in Maya, flip your normals again and you should be fine. As far as I have experienced, mirroring does screw up your transformations, but it leaves the normals untouched. Did you delete the entire history before exporting? that solves a lot of transformation issues aswell.

Strange you said it was inside out before flipping the normals, did that model look as it should in the upload window? And did you upload this one to see the result inworld?

[Jesseaitui Petion]

Hi,
It is no longer inside out (though it does sort of looks like that in the included photo).

When I initially uploaded the model, the mirrored model was indeed inside out.
I solved this problem by Polygons> Reverse normals. Now it is fine in that regard.
Though whether something else on the model is inside out is a possibilty.. I just don't know what that would be.

The model is UV unwrapped already and textures fine.
Here is a photo of both the left and right ear uploaded into SL. (Does not appear inside out)
Note: I am using the same texture/UV map per both pairs of ears.

Ears With Baked Textured:

 

Ears With Plain White Texture:

As you can see, one is darker than the other. What is causing this?

 

Edit:
The only time they appear the same colour is when "full bright" is on

[Landon Spot]

Maybe your windlight settings? Did you do those in maya, they're quite good btw

 

[Jesseaitui Petion]

I don't think it's my windlight, I thought it was nearby lighting at first so I TP'd to a few places and they appear off colour.
It is even notibly darker in the "mesh preview window" (Which is a preview of it before you load it into SL.  I posted the photos of these in my initial thread post).

 

& thank you Yes, I modelled them completely in maya

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

If it's not inside out I wouldn't know what causes it, but one isn't really darker than the other, it just has inversed light, in other words, it's a negative of the other, or in even other words, it's the effect you get when lighting something from below, like a flashlight under your face. When you set the textures to full bright, you disable all shadow and light effects so that makes sense.

Very weird... sorry I can't help.

[Jesseaitui Petion]

So this lighting scenario you speak of is essentially embedded into the actual model?
If so, it must be a setting I need to alter. There are plenty of people making mesh feet/shoe mirrors without these issues.

 
And no worries, thank you for trying

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

---

Jesseaitui Petion wrote:

So this lighting scenario you speak of is essentially embedded into the actual model?

If so, it must be a sitting I need to alter. There are plenty of people making mesh feet/shoe mirrors without these issues.

---

The only two ways of achieving the effect are either making your model inside out or lighting it from below. That's the case for both RL and SL. It's a very deceiving optical illusion, so are you really really really sure it's not inside out? I guess I know the answer, just have to ask it...

(Youtube)

Hollow face illusion

Since the issue appears in the uploader and in SL and assuming all your Maya settings represent a model with no weird transforms, no undeleted history and the correct normals, I'd say it has to be the exporter, but that doesn't make a lot of sense either since you're the very first with the issue. I'm not a Maya user, so I can't say where to look.

It might be helpful if you describe a complete step-by-step of the mirroring so other Maya users might see if you do anything different. (Or was that 4 step sequence everything you did?)

[Drongle McMahon]

I agree that this appears to have inverted normals. The fact that it depends on shading (which isn't applied with full bright) confirms this. You can look at the normals inworld using the menu Develop->Render Metadata->Normals. That would tell you whether this is the immediate cause. I don't know about Maya, but in Blender when you mirror an object it applies a -1 scale. The importer doesn't like that, so you have to apply the object transformation to the object data. I think there is some sort of equivalent to applying transforms in Maya (deleting history?). That inverts the normals. It also inverts normals if you mirror in Edit mode.

[Jesseaitui Petion]

Thank you Kwakkelde and Drongle.

 

Well, it seems we are getting somewhere, but it is now confusing me.
I understand that turning my model to -1 flips normals, this caused it to be inside out.
I reversed normals to fix that issue. So how do I still have inverted normals?

Freezing transformers should fix that, no?

Here are my steps:

1. Ctrl+D to copy original object
2. Scale to -1 for mirror image
3. Object Mode Select > Display > Normals > Reverse
4. Delete history, freeze transformers, reset
5. Export as fbx
6. Use FBX converter to convert to dae
7. Load to game

[Jesseaitui Petion]

---

Drongle McMahon wrote:

I agree that this appears to have inverted normals. The fact that it depends on shading (which isn't applied with full bright) confirms this. You can look at the normals inworld using the menu Develop->Render Metadata->Normals.

---

It did confirm it, here is the image:

 

Whenever I reverse normals, I get an inside-out sculpt though.

Must be a simple step I am missing :smileyfrustrated:

 

 

 

 

[Betty Doyle]

I don't know if this will help with your issue, but when I make shoes, I do it this way:

1. duplicate object

2. -1 to mirror

3. freeze, reset transformations, delete all by type history (you'll see this message: // Warning: Freeze transform with negative scale will set the 'opposite' attribute for these nodes: polySurfaceShape21)

4. Normals - Reverse Normals

5. freeze, reset transformations, delete all by type history

6. export

 

 

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

---

Jesseaitui Petion wrote:

Whenever I reverse normals, I get an inside-out sculpt though.

---

Yes that's exactly what is means:) An object with the normals pointing the wrong way IS inside out.

[Drongle McMahon]

So that's an extra freeze etc.. between mirroring and restoring normals. Maybe that's the answer (although these obscure Maya terms do not coincide at all with my world-view).

[Betty Doyle]

Yes. I believe it's the first freeze that actually flips the normals the wrong way after an object is mirrored. However, it doesn't seem to work the other way around.  Reversing normals first, so that they are inside out, and then freezing transformations does not flip them the right way again.  At least, that's how it appears from my messing around with it.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

Rather than using Duplicate (CTRL+D) try Edit > Duplicate Special, open the options and change the scale value of the axis you wish to mirror the object on from 1.0 to -1.0,  That should give you a mirrored copy of the object with correctly mirrored normals. 

If you're working with something you intend to continue editing set the Geometry Type to Instance rather than Copy since that way any further changes you make to the geometry of the original will also occur in the mirrored instance as well, just remember to delete the object history on the instance before exporting.

[Jesseaitui Petion]

What colour do your meshes upload as? A pure white, or an off-white/grey colour?
Also, what settings do you have checked in your "Reverse Normals" option box?

 

I followed your steps and I still get an off-white/grey mesh upload with the normals pointing inwards as I showed in my previous photo.

Beginning to think maybe my pure white mesh is the issue, however, the normals are facing the correct way on that one

 

Left: Pure white base     Right: Grey Base

 

 

 

 

[Jesseaitui Petion]

Okay, that doesn't make sense unless there are 2 definitions to being "inside out".

In my photo where I show the normals metadata, the one on the right has normals pointing inwards, but the sculpt itself is not inside out.

Initially, my sculpt was litereally turned inside out as seen in Sae's thread here.

[Jesseaitui Petion]

-.-  I fixed it.  Knew I was just overlooking something simple (Story of my life)

 

Under reverse normals option it was set to "Reverse Normals"

But needed to be set to "Presever user normals direction"

 

Thanks a lot to each and every one of you for your help, I really appreciate it.

[Betty Doyle]

Mine upload white and is set to Reverse User Normals and Selected Faces. Not sure why it didn't work for you, but glad you have it working now!

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Jesseaitui Petion wrote:

Okay, that doesn't make sense unless there are 2 definitions to being "inside out".

In my photo where I show the normals metadata, the one on the right has normals pointing inwards, but the sculpt itself is not inside out.

Initially, my sculpt was litereally turned inside out

as seen in Sae's thread here

.

---

First of all, glad you worked it out, but the thread you linked shows exactly the same effect as your model did. Inside out is inside out, and it is because of inverted normals.

 

 

[Jesseaitui Petion]

The photos I showed you all were not inside out like Sae's model was.  Before hitting "reverse normals" it was indeed like Sae's; I did not provide any photos of this as reversing the normals had solved that issue.  Then, I ended up with a model that was no longer inside-out, but turned grey. I could not troubleshoot it so I created this thread.  If you are curious, I can recreate the ear being inside out and show you the differnece between the truly inside-out ear, and the grey model I eventually ended up with.  Whatever the case, it is fixed now.