Maya FBX Exporting, Normal Information Disappearing.

[Anonymous]

I am currently having an issue where the specifically defined vertex normals I have on a rigged and weighted mesh are not being exported when I save out to an FBX file.

Attached is an image/example of my problem. Those meshes are being rendered in Unreal. However, if I export a rigged mesh in Maya to FBX, and then import it into Maya again, the same issue occurs. It appears that the normal information is not being exported out. I literally can not have user defined vertex normals if I export/import Maya's rigged FBXs into any other software.

Currently I have tested my FBX's in with:

Maya 2013 / FBX 2013.3
Max 2013 / FBX 2013.3
Quicktime FBX 2013.3
Unreal Engine November

Does anyone have any idea what might be going on? This is a huge issue in our current pipeline and essentially makes Maya unusable for modular rigged meshes.

[Carlos_Carpintero]

Hello PolyBend,

Yes, we are aware of this problem, it is currently a limitation.

If were to stay in Maya, the easiest work around is to use the Transfer Attributes tool. The devs are aware of the problem and hopefully there will be a fix in the near future.

Regards,
Carlos

[ilan.keshet]

Was this issue ever resolved?

I've posted a problem I'm having on stackoverflow for this exact thing with skinned meshes. 

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/72876412/fbx-sdk-importing-normals-inconsistent-with-maya-normal...