Parts Come out dark

[Sentmassen]

So I've modeled my part in maya, exported as dae, uv'ed it, textured it, created a cfg file. It all works.

Except the parts are coming out much darker than I expected. I'm not sure what exactly could be causing this.

-Does the material applied in maya have any effect on the dae export?

-The Alpha is for specular, this cant be the source of the problem, can it?

- Could it be a side effect of having softened edges on the model?

Ill post the actual part when I can but I was hoping in the meantime someone would have a shoot from the hip answer.

[Justin Kerbice]

Which shader did you use in Unity ? KSP/diffuse ? or just diffuse ?

(AFAIK, 3D modelling software material are ignored, as not managed by unity)

KSP/diffuse is brighter than stock unity diffuse shader.

[nli2work]

hard to say without seeing an image or two. I've ran into problems with KSP transparency shaders, but never had anything turn out too dark. It could be "soften edges" in maya terms, where two adjacent face normals are averaging between extremely divergent angles you can get a darkening effect. Try setting the model import setting to calculate the mesh normals instead of import. and adjust the smoothing angle slider

[Sentmassen]

Which shader did you use in Unity ? KSP/diffuse ? or just diffuse ?

(AFAIK, 3D modelling software material are ignored, as not managed by unity)

KSP/diffuse is brighter than stock unity diffuse shader.

I never used Unity. Took the DAE export from maya and directed the cfg file to look for it and the png texture.

hard to say without seeing an image or two. I've ran into problems with KSP transparency shaders, but never had anything turn out too dark. It could be "soften edges" in maya terms, where two adjacent face normals are averaging between extremely divergent angles you can get a darkening effect. Try setting the model import setting to calculate the mesh normals instead of import. and adjust the smoothing angle slider

My first impulse is to say it shouldn't be the normals. I was careful to keep it to a specific sides. Also if it was normals, it wouldn't be so even across it. It looks like the texture has a black layer over it set to 20%.

Edited July 3, 2014 by Sentmassen

[nli2work]

I never used Unity. Took the DAE export from maya and directed the cfg file to look for it and the png texture.

My first impulse is to say it shouldn't be the normals. I was careful to keep it to a specific sides. Also if it was normals, it wouldn't be so even across it. It looks like the texture has a black layer over it set to 20%.

yeah sounds like improper shaders then. you need to import it into Unity and assign a KSP shader and write it out to mu format.