If I create a mesh in Blender 2.62 that I want shaded flat, despite the Blender editor shading it such, the normals are still averaged:
And thus it is shaded smooth in Unity 3.5:
In both the direct Blender file and an exported FBX, I tried changing “Normals” from “Import” to “Calculate” but for some reason when I click “Apply”, it simply reverts it back to “Import”. Why do you suppose it can’t recalculate the normals?
Thanks.
Adjust the Smoothing Angle with the slider below after changing it to Calculate.
I did; this has no effect. When I change it to “Calculate”, set the smoothing angle and hit “Apply”, the “Calculate” option reverts back to “Import”, making the Smoothing Angle slider grayed out and inapplicable.
Use the edge split modifier in Blender.
Yes, this is what I ended up having to do. My question is more out of curiousity as to why Unity is suddenly unable to do it itself, after being able to in the last version. A problem in the mesh makeup, or a 3.5 bug? Is everyone else able to tell Unity to calculate normals in an imported .blend or FBX?
I understand. I didn’t try Blender models with 3.5. So I didn’t know about that issue. But it doesn’t surprise me. Every time UT ships a new Unity version, you can be sure something is broken. That sucks.
Actually, the problem is not limited to normal calculation, but indeed any setting at all. Any changes made to anything in the Inspector when selecting an FBX model in the Project panel are lost and not applied, reverting to the default with animations and materials turned off.
This still seems to be the case in 3.5.2. Is anyone else able to apply changes made to imported FBX files? A known bug perhaps?
I haven’t had any problems like this. One possibility is that you have some import script in your project that is overriding your settings. Have you tried it with a blank project?
@blitzen
just curious, but are you selecting Apply (think thats the name) in the bottom of the inspector window after making changes to the importer settings?
Why indeed, the moron that was last working on this project left an (outdated) AssetPostprocessor script in the Editor folder that was hard-coding all these defaults. Good call!
I found that you don’t need this. Set Unity to calculate the normals and it should flatten out the edges.
Hope this helped.