If I set the "Normal" slider value in Blender under "Geometry" for the texture to 2.0. I see a normal value of X: 1, Y: -1 when I look at the object in the console log. Am I missing something?
I'm using ThreeJS R97.
From your description of "Normal slider under Geometry", I'm guessing you're talking about Blender 2.79x or earlier, Blender's built-in renderer, material settings, where that slider controls the strength of the applied normal map.
So, a couple of things to talk about here. First, the glTF exporter doesn't officially support the built-in Blender Render materials, and this slider is not hooked up as you've already discovered. The development effort for the exporter is now focused on an addon called glTF-Blender-IO, which works in Blender 2.79 but actually ships pre-installed in Blender 2.80 Beta.
This addon works with the Cycles and Eevee engines using the "Principled BSDF" node, optionally in combination with a few helper nodes such as "Normal Map". So, the glTF exporter expects to find a normal map hooked up like this:
Keep in mind, the glTF format doesn't contain the nodes themselves, but, the exporter will understand this hookup and will write the normal map into the glTF file, along with optionally the base color, metallic, roughness, and emissive maps (via another separate node needed for emissive).
But there's a small wrinkle in this plan, it looks like strength is not hooked up yet. Blender's "Normal Map" node contains a "strength" parameter, and the glTF format contains a corresponding parameter called normalTexture.scale which does the same thing, but, it looks like the exporter is not copying the value from one place to the other. I filed issue #241 on that, and hopefully that will get fixed eventually.
In ThreeJS, the values of X: 1, Y: -1 are intentional for a unit-strength normal map. ThreeJS normal maps use a different Y-convention from the glTF format, so Y is intentionally flipped when loading a normal map from glTF. So, to double the strength of it, you would set X: 2, Y: -2. For now, it looks like assigning this in code (or manually editing a glTF) are the only options until the exporter has a feature added to copy the missing strength parameter.
Related
Blender has the ability to set a material to Flat or Smooth.
In the Blender exporter for three.js, when I check "Export Normals" to JS model, I always export all materials as Smooth. The exported file is twice bigger.
Is there a way to export models with Flat Shaded and Smooth shaded faces without need to set it manually in three.js ?
There is no flatshading/noshading/smoothshading equivalent in blender. However as few other features (blending, depthwrite, depthtest) it could be proposed in the 'threejs' part of the material pannel.
You could do it yourself by editing the following files in the addon :
constants.py,
__init__.py,
exporter/material.py,
exporter/api/material.py
(copy the way blending types work for example)
You would just pay attention that the blender io-three addon yet has a shading field for materials, used to define phong or lambert materials. You would just have to chose an other name.
Finally you would also have to edit threejs so the JSONLoader can parse the new property you add.
That said, it is a bit longer than setting your materials properties in your code, since you will always need to write material=new THREE.Mesh****Material(properties)...
I'm currently working on something along the lines of a plugin for another program to add 3D capability to it, so I'm trying to put all the functionality i can from three.js into it, with the added goal of this being a good way to learn all the functionality of three.js firsthand.
I'm running into an issue now as i implement textures and materials that with mesh basic material, setting some things which the documentation on the main threejs.org site shows are features, doesn't actually do anything.
when i set a texture for either specularmap or lightmap nothing is actually showing up. Im pretty sure its not a mistake im making because setting the texture of the map works, but trying to set this same texture for the specularMap or lightMap is doing nothing. Does a regular texture work for these, or do i have to do something different?
I'd also like to know what the shading property does for mesh basic, because as far as i can see setting it to smoothshading/flatshading/noshading is doing nothing aswell.
MeshBasicMaterial does not respond to lights. Change your material to MeshLamberMaterial or MeshPhongMaterial, for example.
For MeshBasicMaterial and MeshLambertMaterial, the specularMap is used only to modulate the reflection when an environment map is used.
For any material, lightmaps require a second set of UVs. geometry.faceVertexUvs[ 0 ] contains the usual set of UVs; for a lightmap, you need to add geometry.faceVertexUvs[ 1 ], a second set of UVs.
For MeshBasicMaterial, the shading property only applies when an environment map is used. SmoothShading will yield smooth reflections; FlatShading will yield faceted reflections.
three.js r.66
I have made a pipe in Maya, on which I have animated the thickness (Below is an example of 4 of the keyframes in the animation). Unfortunately when I export it as an fbx file, the animation of the of the thickness is not saved. Is there a way to save an animation that would be something similar to this one or some help on getting this solution to work?
I'm fairly new to Maya so there might be something I'm missing. Hope you can help me.
Default FBX won't export the changes in the geometry - it will give you the position, rotation and scale of the object over time but not changes to vertex positions within the object.
You can turn on the 'Geometry Cache' option in the fbx export dialog:
Vertex Animation stored in FBX file without using Point Cache?
However not all applications that use FBX support geometry caches - you'll have to see what your target software supports. Other options might be to export a series of .OBJ files (1 per frame) and use the vertex data from those, or to use an animated geometry specific format like Alembic
I'm trying to create, modify and update (directional only for now) lights and shadowmaps dynamically. The light, shadow and shadow camera helper gets updated correctly as I move the light around or change shadow properties, except from the light's point of view, everything behind the origin (0,0,0) is shadowed for no apparent reason.
Screenshots:
http://i.imgur.com/n4AHvle.png
http://i.imgur.com/l0uaZHD.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/brKwCof.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/a6dqMGo.jpg (new, with spotlight)
You can see a scene with car and a piece of ground, they belong to a geometry imported with ColladaLoader. The problem is with shadowmapping, the car throws shadow correctly, but there are stripy shadows on the ground even though there is nothing else than the car obscuring light.
If I add more similar lights, they also have the same 4 stripes. They also appear with spotlight. If I change shadow map resolution, the stripes' size changes relative to each other, but there seems to be always four of them, spaced from center to both directions.
EDIT: JSFiddle here: http://jsfiddle.net/cL3hX/1/ There shouldn't be any shadows in the scene, unless some new geometry is introduced inside the shadow camera frustum.
Couple of notes on the fiddle:
I have r55, but the demo is r54 because jsfiddle apparently does not yet have r55.
I could only reproduce this with a Collada file. So it probably has something to do with the model. I created a simple cube in Sketchup 8, and tried to export it with various collada options.
In the JSFiddle I could only reproduce the bug with a file exported with "doublesided faces" -setting enabled. In my own application code, I do have the same bug on models created with or without that setting enabled, but in the fiddle, the bug seems to be triggered only when "doublesided faces" are exported. Anyway I do need to somehow show backsides of faces, because the tool I'm developing must work with Sketchup exports, and it's very hard to make models in Sketchup without having a mess of frontsides/backsides visible.
The very simple Collada file is included in the JSFiddle as javascript variable. Here's a download link for the same file: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14489569/shadowmapdemo.dae
The problem is your Collada model.
Your "plane" is actually multiple coplanar faces back-to-back in a single geometry.
It's no wonder there are artifacts.
Replace it with a THREE.CubeGeometry.
I've acquired a great quad model. I skinned and animated it to a rig build by a
Mel script. It works great as far as editing the animation using sliders and parameters
in Maya. When I export the file as an FBX file to Unity3D, it does not animate. Is something
being lost in the translation from Mel to the rig? Unity needs a boned rig, is this procedural rig not the equivalent of a rig built and animated with the skeleton tools in Maya? I've check that I have a 'Reference' folder, I've set keys, changed root name to "Hips".
Thanks for any insight on this question.
dDuane
If you are transferring the file with no errors and there is no animation then there are three issues to look at.
First, you may have accidentally not exported the keyframes. Make sure the box is checked to export animation on the FBX export UI.
Second, it's possible that the object that contains the actual keyframes is not being exported. When you animate using the MEL scripted GUI, find out where the actual keyframes are on the rig and make sure that object is exporting with the rest of the character.
Third, the object might be transferring fine but depending on the rig setup the connections/constraints/whatever might not be working or supported in Unity. You might consider baking the animation to the skeleton before transferring to the engine. To do this, select the skeleton, click [Edit -> Keys -> Bake Simulation].
I don't know what Maya you are using, but I've always used 2010. This is the workflow that we used for a small unity 3D game project:
Export all of the
animations in one scene as a .fbx. Be sure you just select the geometry (it
usually helps to have it all grouped, but if you can't for some reason that's
okay) and hit export selected.
These FBX export options should be checked:
Geometry:
Edge smoothing,
Tangents and Bi-normals
Animation:
Animation,
Bake Animations,
Bake Animations,
(range of animation),
step = 1
Deformed Models:
Deformed Models,
Skins,
Blend Shapes (if using these),
Curve Filters,
Resample as Euler Interpolation,
Input Connections,
Instances to Objects,
Referenced Containers Content (if using any references),
FBX File Format
Binary
FBX200900
When you bring this into Unity, set animation generation
to "store in root." If all of your
animation is in this one file (which it should be). The "split
animations" box should be checked and define the names and range of these in the
chart below. When you eventually create an animation blending script, drag
and drop it on the animation object within the player prefab, not the prefab
itself.