Exporting Skinned mesh will recompute vertex normals

[Anonymous]

Maya documentation says:

"Normals are automatically unlocked for all deformed geometry imported into Maya."

But in a multi software pipeline using Max and Maya and game engine, the normals must be recompute only when we want. So this is very important to be able to control if we want to recompute or not the normals. Is it possible to not automatically unlock normals for deformed geometry? Or can it be added in a future release of Maya?

Currently we model in Max and animate in Maya, so the modeler loose control of the normals after the animator modify the skinning and weight of the asset.

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

Have you tried locking the normals before exporting?

If that doesn't work then yes we may need to look into this as either an issue that needs to be fixed and/or a feature change or update for a future update/release of Maya.

[Anonymous]

Hi Sean,

"Unlock Normals" is a concept use only by Maya fbx importer, its an option to decide weather or not the normals should be imported or recompute(control by Maya). The issue here is this option is ignored when importing a deformed object (in our case a skinned model). I point you the documentation in the first message, you can look at the "Unlock Normals" option paragraph, it said normals are always unlock for deformed mesh. My point is the option should always be supported. Since we use normals map in our game materials, changing the model normals create shading errors.

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

Right I understand why this is important I just wanted to see if locking it would work on export.

I've looked this up in our log and it does indeed look like this is on developments radar and they are working on changing it in a future release or update of Maya.

It also wouldn't hurt to post this on the Maya Idea Board to get some more traction. This is a great place for the community to share ideas or feature they want to see in the future of Maya and this board is regularly checked by the dev team.

[jewboy0117]

Yes, this is still a huge issue. I have a specific normal setup on an asset and after applying skin cluster and exporting the fbx, the normals unlock.

[asocoba96]

Hello! I'm wondering if this problem got solved. I am trying to export a skinned mesh with the normals averaged as an fbx, but I still seeing the same problem when importing the fbx back into Maya. I tried unchecking the animation and locking the normals, but it doesn't seem to solve it. Let me know if there is any way to fix it. Thank you!