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Old 19-03-20, 16:25   #1
LaraHCroft91
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Default How to preserve edited normals in Metasequoia?

Hi
When i edit normals in Metasequoia they are lost as soon as i save wad in wadmerger. So is there a way how to preserve them?

Just so you know i edited Lara's meshes. When TR2 Lara meshes are converted into wad, some triangulated faces are converted into quads and overall mesh lost its settings of normals from original TR2 ones. So i exported TR2 Lara's mesh from TRViewer, i exported mesh from StrPix, both i imported in Meta, i triangulated faces that should be triangulated and i compared normals and fixed them for every vertexes. So don't tell me i have to do it all over again after saving in Wadmerger

(note: Exporting TR2 mesh from TRViewer to Meta and simply saving it and importing it in StrPix doesn't work - the result is flat-shaded faces)

Using NGLE 1.3.0.7
Metasequoia 4

Thank you
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Old 19-03-20, 16:56   #2
Titak
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When the automatic "reclac normals" functions in STRPix don't work well enough for me (like on double sides faces), I use EditWad to manually edit the normals.

I've never had problems with them disappearing when saving the wad with WADMerger afterwards.
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Old 19-03-20, 17:18   #3
LaraHCroft91
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Titak View Post
When the automatic "reclac normals" functions in STRPix don't work well enough for me (like on double sides faces), I use EditWad to manually edit the normals.

I've never had problems with them disappearing when saving the wad with WADMerger afterwards.
You mean that you export the .mqo file from editWad and edit the normals in Meta? Because i don't see any way how to set normals manually in editwad.

I need to add that i didn't meant that the normals are lost in game when you save it in wadmerger. But if you export the mesh from StrPix again to meta, then your previous work is gone. That is what i meant.

Last edited by LaraHCroft91; 19-03-20 at 17:52.
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Old 19-03-20, 18:35   #4
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It is always like that. Normals get messed up when reimporting a mesh after editing.

It will be the same when you edit the normals manually in Meta after exporting the normals.mqo with EditWad.
Those edits will be lost once you export the mesh again with STRpix.

When you said setting normals manually I thought you meant editing them in Meta.
I don't call the STRPix ways of recalculating normals a manual procedure. That's why.
Misunderstanding there.

Editing them manually is superior to those functions in STRPix though. STRPix does a good job in general, but some things don't get calculated correctly, liek on double-sided faces for example.
It's a tedious job to adjust them manually though...

Last edited by Titak; 19-03-20 at 18:36.
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Old 19-03-20, 18:38   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Titak View Post
It is always like that. Normals get messed up when reimporting a mesh after editing.

It will be the same when you edit the normals manually in Meta after exporting the normals.mqo with EditWad.
Those edits will be lost once you export the mesh again with STRpix.

When you said setting normals manually I thought you meant editing them in Meta.
I don't call the STRPix ways of recalculating normals a manual procedure. That's why.
Misunderstanding there.
I meant editing them in meta. I don't call StrPix ways of recalculating normals a manual procedure either

It's a shame that the settings are lost... But what can i do. Thank you anyway

Quote:
Editing them manually is superior to those functions in STRPix though. STRPix does a good job in general, but some things don't get calculated correctly, liek on double-sided faces for example.
It's a tedious job to adjust them manually though...
Yes It's not fun at all to edit them manually. But since i want the same normals as in TR2 i have to do it becase the StrPix methods provide completely different results from TR2.

Last edited by LaraHCroft91; 19-03-20 at 18:41.
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Old 19-03-20, 18:40   #6
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So you have been editing them using that normals.mqo you can export with EditWad?

Anyway, this is the reason why I do not edit the normals until an outfit is 100% done when it comes to shaping the meshes.
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Old 19-03-20, 19:35   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Titak View Post
So you have been editing them using that normals.mqo you can export with EditWad?

Anyway, this is the reason why I do not edit the normals until an outfit is 100% done when it comes to shaping the meshes.
Yes i understand and generally it is a good idea to do it when the outfit is 100% done but i am using TR2 Lara for this so my outfit is done

And i tried to export a mesh with editwad as a .mqo and you are right that there were some normals but not the ones that are in meta. And i need to edit the meta ones. I will use very proffesional language now - the simple lines And editwad created some normals with squares at the end

The thing is that the "meta" normals are calculated for every vertex of every face (triangle or quad). So it looks like this:


(on the right is TR2 mesh12 (Lara's forearm) exported from TRViewer as .3ds and on the left is also TR2 mesh12 but copied from Wall.tr2 to wad and exported from StrPix to .mqo)
And what i do is copying normals from every corner of every face (in this case triangles) of the TR2 mesh to my mesh. And also i have to triangulate the quads again. Fun so every corner of the mesh has at least 3 normals.

But the "editwad" normals are only single lines (i don't have a clue what they represent).

Edit: And the reason that the left mesh has visibly "less" normals is not true. They are simply overlapping themselfs.

Last edited by LaraHCroft91; 19-03-20 at 19:37.
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Old 19-03-20, 19:42   #8
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Quote:
so every corner of the mesh has at least 3 normals.
this will result in flat shading. in most cases, each vertex should have the AVERAGE normal of all adjoining faces.


if you have multiple normals per vertex then you will see a "cut" in shading.
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Old 19-03-20, 20:17   #9
LaraHCroft91
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TR-Freak View Post
this will result in flat shading. in most cases, each vertex should have the AVERAGE normal of all adjoining faces.


if you have multiple normals per vertex then you will see a "cut" in shading.
That is how TR2 meshes are. As you can see on the picture i posted earlier they have multiple normals for vertexes. And TR4 meshes has them too. And there is no flat shading in game. There is only one artifact in my mesh but i don't know why...



And look on this. This looks amazing in my opinion. Just like in TR2 (fixed normals for left leg and left arm)


(don't mind the messed textures - it is because of the triangulation of the quads)

Last edited by LaraHCroft91; 19-03-20 at 21:10.
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Old 19-03-20, 21:15   #10
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Oh, now I understand why you could edit normals without exporting the normals.mqo with EditWad.
I do not have that version of Meta. So no normals visible in my version of Meta.

And yes, the normals in the normals.mqo must be the single average normals that TR-Freak mentioned then.
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