Hard Edges on Mod Part

[RaginCaucasian]

I've been experimenting with creating a parts mod, and I just finished my proof-of-concept. When I loaded it into KSP, I noticed that the edges of my part stood out. Comparing my part to a stock part, I can't see any huge difference in the number of Tris. Lighting in the word vs. hangar doesn't seem to affect it, either.

The part looked fine in Blender, but the edges look as shown in Unity and in KSP. For my material in Unity, I picked KSP/Diffuse, as suggested in some tutorials I saw. Could that have something to do with it?

[liquidhype]

In Blender, under Tools in the left-hand menu, click "Smooth" under Shading. Then head on over to the modifiers on the right-hand side indicated by a little wrench, chose the "Edge Split" modifier and hit "apply".

Also you can smooth the part in Unity. If you click on the model you imported, have a look under the "Inspector" tab where it says "Normals & Tangents". If you change Normals from "Import" to "calculate" and hit "apply, you should also get a smooth part.

Edited January 23, 2016 by liquidhype

[RaginCaucasian]

45 minutes ago, liquidhype said:

In Blender, under Tools in the left-hand menu, click "Smooth" under Shading. Then head on over to the modifiers on the right-hand side indicated by a little wrench, chose the "Edge Split" modifier and hit "apply".

This was my problem. Thanks for the help!

[InsaneDruid]

Just a quick addendum:

You don't need to apply the edgesplit modifier, as they will get auto-applied during export to FBX. Makes for a more non-destructive workflow if you keep all the modifiers un-applied as long as they can be.

Also, the edgesplit modifier can be used with two modes: auto-splitting based on the angle of adjacent faces of the mesh (30° default when adding a edgesplit modifier to a mesh) which can be toggled by the "edge angle" checkbox and/or manually specifying sharp edges by selecting them and ALT-E->mark sharp when the "sharp edges" checkbox is ticked. That way you can REALLY choose which edge should be smoothed, and which not. Personally, I try to avoid the smoothing based on angles, to not accidently sharpen or smoothen an edge. Of course, this depends on the complexity of the mesh.

[liquidhype]

36 minutes ago, InsaneDruid said:

Just a quick addendum:

You don't need to apply the edgesplit modifier, as they will get auto-applied during export to FBX. Makes for a more non-destructive workflow if you keep all the modifiers un-applied as long as they can be.

 

Of course. My advice was given under the assumption that his model(s) were finisihed and ready to be brought into the game, based on the image he posted. His issue was the models showing up in the game with flat shading, so, that pretty much confirms that the model(s) were done and indeed needed no more change.

Also as a sidenote; Clicking "apply" on an edge split modifier is not destructive. You simply right-click the model, go into edit mode, select "all", click "w" and select "remove doubles". Now you can set the shading back to "flat" and continue editing the mesh without any issues

Edited January 23, 2016 by liquidhype

[InsaneDruid]

I know, my comment was rather a generic advice (to new users reading this here) to not applying modifiers too early, but to keep them as long as possible. A remove doubles can by itself generate problems when you had a split mesh and a edgesplit but now the threshold of the remove doubles is to big and... you know