Hi I have a whole load of models to import into PlayCanvas. I have the textures, but they aren’t imported as standard. Is there some way I can configure imports to find the textures?
I believe the FBX are in ASCII format with embedded textures. But perhaps it’s just references… Would that be the issue
I’ve followed advice in another thread and used the Autodesk FBX Converter - this does seem to help a bit, but still most models seem to include the textures when I look at them but are blank after import.
Also UVs seem to be wrong. Figure I’m missing something!
On closer inspection I can’t work out quite what has gone wrong. Turned off lighting and culling and I still get weird effects with plain textures so I’m not sure it’s normals or winding order. Grey rim here still has artefacts and it’s a plain grey texture, emissive, unlit, no backface culling.
In 3ds max is embed media the option that allow to export texture. I don’t know if u use that or maya but i think u already tired that.
Can you share an example zip containing model + textures please?
Will I’ve emailed you a link to most of the assets from this project(it’s huge, wanted you to have more reference materials). Here’s a zip with the few I’ve put through Autodesk Converter in a number of different output formats. Media embedded
Thanks @ayrin, all I’ve got are some finished models that were supplied to me. They are working fine in a Unity project, but seem to import messed up here. I’m using Autodesk Converter to embed the textures, but I’m not totally sure that it is the textures messing up - as PlayCanvas seems to import some textures when I drop the FBX.
In case it helps, here’s the model in Unity. Might be lightmap UVs in that export?
Which in this case I did export from Unity using an exporter. However, I have similar problems all of the other models I tried to convert without that.
which should look like:
I had similar problems with models with bones i messed up a little before find the right method of export. If you want i can give u the parameters i use. But i removed all the lights and cameras from scenes so i don’t know if that is ok for u.
The normals are screwed. I’m guessing they contain random values maybe? You can see this if you import back into 3DS Max, say:
Here’s what the model looks like by default in PlayCanvas:
However, I simply imported the FBX into Maya and selected:
Mesh Display -> Set Normal Angle
I epxorted to FBX again and imported back into the Editor. And I get this:
So, yeah, you need to set the normals to something sensible.
Thanks Will. What a nightmare. Guess I’ll try to do something with the exporter I’ve got in the project. Try to rewrite that and re-export the normal models too as well as some of the combined ones.
Odd that they are working in Unity right? Also the ones I exported using the exporter module are screwed. So it seems Unity is doing something with normals that Maya and PC aren’t. How strange.
But the thing is, if you import your FBX files into Max, the normals are screwed, as I mentioned. I have no idea what Unity is doing, but if Max can’t read the files properly, there’s something seriously wrong with the normal data in the files.
There’s something in the Unity forums about models being imported with normals pointing wrongly based on UV propagation. Lots of pictures that look similar and instructions on doing things in Maya to stop it happening. Apparently they auto fix it now. Guess it’s that.
Guess I don’t care and I can just regenerate them anyway. If I imported a model without normals - would PC generate them or should I do that. Guess I need to generate tangents anyway.
I must admit, I’ve never see this problem occur on import before so must be pretty rare.
I’ve identified that this is an issue with Unity set up models (the models are reversed by the alternate “hand” of the systems). The issue can also happen with Maya etc. To save a long process of modifying these models it would be great if we could get an option to flip the normals of the model?
(I’ve got 1000 models to import lol)
Are you exporting from Max or Maya to begin with?
I am a Max user, to fix the Normals you can apply a smoothing modifier, default is 30 and works in most cases. The model looking good in Unity might be a result of the fact that Unity can create Normals, I don’t think Play Canvas can do that.
For Maya you should be able to Google how to assign or fix normals.
The models are from a third party commercial library that I’m using for a game. Importing 1000 of them and then exporting again is an issue! I believe the normals are fine but setup for the alternative handedness of the Unity system. This is happening for every Unity model I’ve tried. Generating normals can be achieved at runtime, but an option to switch them would make the editor much more useful. Currently it would take me more than 5 days at the current run rate to get all of these models sorted.
I’ve built a Unity exporter which flips the normals but that process also requires significant manual work sadly.
