Need some lighting help

[Clockwork_werewolf]

So I'm new to modeling and I've got some problems with the lighting on my first part. I'm so new I'm not sure even what info is useful or not so aside from all parts and screenshots of every screen of blender and unity I don't know what to post.

Here is the part and the lighting problems.

Second and third pictures show weird lighting around the top of the vents and on the sideways pictures on all lighting seems off.

[Justin Kerbice]

What modelling program did you use ?

If it's 3dsmax or some other low-level style programs, it looks like vertices on the "front line" need to be welded together.

Better to show also the raw object without texture at all, as texture can hide issues (sometimes on purpose ).

[Clockwork_werewolf]

Sketchup mostly because it is easy to use, free and I now know how to use it.

Picture of the model in Blender without a texture

I fused the faces on the last panel. It seemed like the right thing to do.

[Greys]

Set everything to smooth shading and also recalculate the normals

I've been told that Unity makes everything smooth, I'm not sure how true that is but as a matter of practice what I'd suggest is that you select any feature on your part you want to be sharp, and split along it, so for instance these:

Actually split the mesh along those lines [ here's how ], and then smooth everything else. As well, there is a way to manipulate how much smoothing is applied, but I don't know where that is.

With the mesh split up like that smoothing is a lot simpler for the engine to process correctly, the issue can be that it's trying to smooth say, the cylinder wall of the part, against the nearly perpendicular side of the nub you've placed on it, which makes both faces look wrong compared to the ones they're actually supposed to be congruent with. If the face is only considering the other faces that it's supposed to be smoothed against, it's less able to go wrong.

edit: PS, recalculating the normals has a tendency to fix a lot of minor things, and it usually doesn't take more than a second to do, so you may as well do it every time you think you're done before trying to re-export, or even more frequently.

Edited June 2, 2014 by Greys

[Clockwork_werewolf]

Thanks for the input, will give this a go and see what's what.

[Starwaster]

I've been told that Unity makes everything smooth, I'm not sure how true that is but as a matter of practice what I'd suggest is that you select any feature on your part you want to be sharp, and split along it, so for instance these:

That sounds a bit strange. Most modeling programs allow you to arbitrarily set a line (or edge) to be soft or hard.

[Justin Kerbice]

I could be wrong but Unity editor (4.3.3 for this matter) and Mu script (from last parttools) does nothing to the mesh itself regarding shading/smoothing. I have made unsmooth models and get unsmooth parts, the same with smoothed ones.

[Snjo]

Don't split manually, set it to smooth, then click the wrench tab and add an Edge Split modifier to the object.

That way it's a non destructive split.

[Greys]

Unity the engine, not Unity the editor