Why are my static meshes are covered in shadow?

Hello and thank you for clicking on this.

My meshes that I have built in MagicaVoxel, exported as .obj and then converted to .fbx using the autodesk converter, seem to be covered in shadow.
http://imgur.com/9ap2g6c
In this picture I have the meshes on the left, and a cube to show the shadow colour. The Skylight is purple to show the difference. If there is no skylight the mesh is completely black.

So I’m wondering if this is a problem of exporting/converting/importing or my inability to lightmap and apply basic light fundamentals to my testing.

Thanks!

Hey there

My first question would be, did you Unwrap the UVs. In general when I see something like this, that is what I forgot to do (i.e. a material that is applied, is just one color on the mesh, and it’s generally a dark color). I have no experience with MagicVoxel, so I don’t know what you would have to do there in order to unwrap the UVs.

as a side note, UE4 should be able to import Obj files as well.

Hope this helps

Inc.

Hey thanks for replying .

No I don’t think I have unwrapped the UV’s. I am fairly new to asset creation and I will look into this.
Would I be able to do this in something like 3ds Max?

Thanks,
Max.

yes you can do that inside Max.
Now dont get confused and do it inside Max instead of Max.
That would result in max uncomfortably for Max while trying to use Max instead of Max.

Be warned!

Yes as stated, you can do the unwrap in 3DS or Blender for that matter, I would first check if MagicVoxel can do it. It’s probably better to do that in the originating package of the mesh, then to do the FBX export, and then import (with the potential loss of data, i.e. rounding errors, two packages look at the same idea differently, or implement it differently, etc). So if you can do the unwrap, in MagicVoxel, I would, and see how that goes for you.

Unwrapping can be a pain in the, eh you know where i’m talking about! lol Now Blender has what is called smart unwrapping (and for those that really know unwrapping they may not like it, but it’s always got me going). So you may wish to give that a go, if MagicVoxel can’t do it. Blender is free (www.blender.org), and to unwrap, do the following.

  1. Import the FBX (click on File, then import, then fbx)
  2. You will initially come up in Object mode, you need to be in Edit Mode, so Press Tab.
  3. Then press A (to select all, the mouse pointer will also need to be over the pane, that the object is in)
  4. Then press U ( you will get a popup menu, where you will see a menu item labeled Smart Unwrap)
  5. Click on Smart Unwrap, and accept the defaults, by clicking ok.
  6. Then just do your export back to a FBX, by clicking on File->Export->FBX

Hope this helps,

Inc.

there is a lighting trouble shooting guide here

Thank you
But I think my Max got stuck in Max and then it broke.
Send help

Thank you!
I will have a look at these

Thank you very much for taking the time to help me.

I haven’t tried it out since I have been thinking to use a more professional modelling software, so I think I’ll start using blender since it’s open source, free and accessible.
But, you have opened my eyes to some new sides to this whole thing, motivating me to get in to modelling (of the 3D kind, not in fashion terms).

Thanks!