I’ve finally decided to look for answers to this probelm. I love Silo for organic shapes but for solid modeling I still go back to the old Universe Modeler, which is really great by the way.
Take a look at these 3 boxes as they appear in Animator. The left box is the Animator ubershape cube plugin - the 2 on the right are regular cubes exported as fac files from Silo.
(I brought in 2 because I thought to triangulate one of them for perhaps a different result but… )
I bet you subdivide the box in silo the shading issue will resolve itself.
Also, for a great solids style modelr check out MOI3D
www.moi3d.com
Hi, Shaya.
I think you need to unify normals in SILO and be sure are looking outwards. And, after subdiv, refine mesh before exporting.
The old, old EiM is still very useful for hard modeling. I use it too.
FelixCat
I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but I had this issue when I used EI. Ei doesn’t let you do much to an object once it’s in except reverse normals. In C4D this is a quick fix, so it’s no longer an issue for me using Silo. It has something to do with the way Silo exports normals. So it’s not just a fac export issue. I export obj’s and it still occasionally does it.
It looks like the edges of the cube are “welded”, so smoothing is applied to the edges regardless of smoothing angle.
Try putting a tiny bevel on each edge. This might help with the cube, although this would be difficult to accomplish on a more complex model.
Dave
The model has smooth shading enabled across those edge(s) (soft edge); bring it into a poly modeler that lets you tag edge shading directly, set it to hard and then re-import to EI
(wings3d is a good example, a free (& open source) modeler that will let you quickly & easily set shading directly -and- it supports FBX which is one of the few formats (other than fact) that the current EI can reliably import models in (get it @wings3d.com)
In reality though, that kind of a geometry (perfectly sharp edge) really doesn’t exist. If you break that edge with even a few faces (even on a tiny radius) your shading issue will disappear. This radius will also allow you to generate a specular highlight on the edge, even a tiny spec hit on the edge will make the object seem much more “real”.
This issue is nicely explained here:
If Tomas and the Igors can implement basic component selection and adjustment, then we should be able to fix this directly in EI. Perhaps for version 9?
I have tried many channels to address the issue in EITG forum but you know the story…In my own time i bring the models from other 3d app as fbx this will import whatever models you have in the entire scene selected or not, open the scene in EI directly as EI has created a model for you the se one model has to pass thru Transporter and open in EI with the shadings correct.
Solutions and more solutions.
Edgard
I really appreciate your responses to my issue. I found the Shading Angles link especially useful.
As a follow up let me just include a new image with a new cube created in accordance with the suggestion from the article - by inseting each face of the cube slightly. Here it is (the cube on the right)
Thanks again,
Shaya
Glad you found a path that worked.
Perhaps with Tomas and the Igors now heading EI, Animator will get some much needed attention to it’s Model I/O issues.
Eventually it did work with a simple model but try using a more complex model where polycount is a bit harder to adjust or impossible. The only route i have found is go the transporter way, in the future it might help . Hopefully the new team is working on it.
Edgard
I haven’t had v.8 long enough to experiment with it much yet, but would the Adaptive Dicer trick (setting Max Steps to ‘0’ and making the cube a child of the plug-in, if I recall correctly) correct this?
Hi Shaya,
you can do also the following. Simply save your model in Silo as .3ds, in case it´s not to big.
.3ds was for me the only file format in the past when using EIAS which directly imports properly, with retaining hard edges and no missing polys etc.
Regards
Stefan
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