Issue with exporting an FBX from Autodesk maya to Zmodeler

[DionGraves]

Hi there, returning user from a year or so ago, having some issues with importing an fbx from Autodesk Maya.

In the past I encountered a similar issue but was able to do a slight work, can't remember what said work around was

Basically whats happening is an export from Maya into Zmodeler has, what I assume is left over vertex information that is rendering 3/4 of the mesh just a black mess, even tho proper textures are attached (I say some because pieces of the interior are correctly textured, where as the undercarriage and misc parts are just plain black) I recall being told to paint the red channel to white within the vertex paint, but all this does is result in said black mesh/textures being turned red, a very similar issue is present even when using dae as the export method

I red a few forum posts that said something about it might be an old version of fbx, I've ensured 2020 FBX version was used for export

Any ideas, please let me know, thank you

https://i.imgur.com/Om2xJJa.png

https://i.imgur.com/iJmB4nG.png

https://i.imgur.com/Tmhn1np.png

https://i.imgur.com/DeOOUsh.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/3Txgveq.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/WMrsZXl.jpeg

[Oleg]

Hello.

Create an object in ZModeler and assign any of problematic model's material onto an object. If the object turns black too, the issue is related to materials settings. Otherwise, the object's geometry is the issue.

An object could be shaded in black (apart from material being wrong) due to the following issue:
1. per-vertex color on a model is black (and vertices color is used in material computation).
2. vertices normals are not calculated.
3. material uses bump/normal mapping and geometry suffers of missing or incorrect tangents data.

As a quick test, assign "Default material" onto your model. If should fix the visual appearance of the problematic object in case of #1 and #3.

You can paint per-vertex color to white with Surface\Paint\Color tool (in "Fill selected" mode for example).
You can fix object normals with Surface\Normals\Calculate tool.
You can enable tangents in object's properties window on Mesh->Vertices->Format branch. After enabling them, using Surface\Normals\Calculate tool for their update is required.

Note, tangents calculation requires geometry to have some UV mapping. If your model suffers UV mapping on UV channel #1, tangents computation will fail or will give incorrect result. Bad tangents will give bad shading of bump/normal-mapped materials.

[DionGraves]

Hi Oleg, appreciate the reply

Issue was fixed by painting the vertex colour white, for some reason I was only painting white on the red channel before

https://i.imgur.com/pO6f2r2.jpeg

[Oleg]

in gta shaders, red per-vertex color component is a baked AO dimmer. Green and blue are used for vertices deformation and burnt effect control. So, beside painting red component to full (white), you need to paint green and blue channels respectively. Note, GTA shaders in ZModeler usually toggle an option "ignore vertices color", so you don't see per-vertex color in 3D view. You can enable this option with no effect on export (in case you need to adjust paint), this option affects drawing model in 3D view.