[Aardwolf]

A lot of models I've seen have no smoothing info.

Conceptually (for those who don't know), each edge of a polygon can either be 'smooth' or 'hard'. Sort of like creased or uncreased. Some ways of converting models to .pof lose this information, either making *every* edge smooth, or making *every* edge creased.

To illustrate, here's a comparison shot:

Good:


Bad (not the exact same model, but it illustrates the point):


I don't have a picture to illustrate every edge being creased, but think what some Vasudan ships would look like if they had faceted polygons  where they should be smooth, or didn't have sharp edges where they have them.

[Spoon]

never had this problem from 3ds max  6 to .pof

[Scooby_Doo]

I think a majority reason for this is those that convert from truespace to pcs. 

[blowfish]

Yeah.  The problem seems to arise most commonly when COB is used at some point.

[esarai]

I notice that this only happens when in a cob all edges are smooth and manifold. For people who must use .cob (like myself), be sure that your groups of faces that form a distinct smooth surface are split from the rest of the mesh. Take for example a cylinder. If it's all set to smooth and the caps are manifold with the sides, then you will see very strange lighting. If you make it so that the caps and sides do not share any vertices or edges, each part will be smoothed independently and make it look more cylindrical.

[chief1983]

It would seem that any time you auto-facet, you're leaving it up to the program to do that based on the angle between polygons instead of the way the original model was set up (if it even has that capability).  COB I think can only auto-facet at best.

[esarai]

That's probably true, but somehow, non-manifold face clusters never get auto-faceted together. It's kinda like the separate smooth-groups in 3DS max.

[blowfish]

Well, of course, because smoothing relies on two faces sharing an edge, which doesn't happen if you have edge-split your model.  They behave as two separate mesh entities.

[chief1983]

Hmm, so I guess you could trick it into smoothing only where you want it to, but it seems not very efficient that way.  At least it might work though.

[Nuke]

converting models often destroys smoothing info which is why i always recommend doing everything in one program and using as few steps as possible to convert it. modeling in max is a surefire way to keep your smoothing data intact, if you can convert out of it without borking colision detection. not ure the status of collada or if it even works. ive had good enough luck with the old skool max converter to care.

[chief1983]

Jacek just managed to convert our X-wing using Max and the ColladaMax OSS plugin without losing any smoothing data.  It's purdy

[Scooby_Doo]

Collada saves smoothing info. Thats way