Modelling/texturing issues

[Red Spot]

why you should not add smoothing groups before you rescale ...

original sword before exporting, but with smoothing groups to the handle;


once exported, than again imported;

(look at the tip of the sword, its most obvious over there)


G

[Red Spot]

scrap the last post, in that it isnt cause of rescaling ..

somehow the importer/exporter always seems to aply smoothing-groups and I cant seem to get rid of them nor aply them ..

does anyone know how I could get smoothing groups to stick while exporting/importing??


edit;
after a few tests the inconclusive search results become clear ...
the game (or exporter) gives models some sort of base smoothing but doesnt actually care about how smoothed (or not) you tried to export ..
(I made several units from the same model, 1 without any smoothing, 1 with some smoothing, etc etc ... all models looked exactly the same as each other, smoothing or not, the models re-imported also always have the same smoothing groups aplied to each face, wether exported with or without smoothing..)
so now I now how to aply smoothing-groups and such .... :o

edit2;
smoothing is in the game ... in an ugly way .. the games uses smoothing as a way to augment reflection, when I face my sword generals new sword with the sun in my back it looks like a toy-sword like if its made from rubber with child-proof edges, when facing the other side I see a pretty heavy sword, something you'd almost want to carry 2-handed..
start a custom-game and turn units around on a sunny map, you'll see that units get smoothed on the side thats reflecting sun, with mixed results ....


G

[Red Spot]

I've adapted something I read about to, wich was in an effort to remove similair like white spots from strat-map models .. wich was to break stuff up, or better said "detach to element" ..

when I use the first sword I get this;

(just the officer in front .. quick-and-dirty copy-and-paste job in BI :))

so I detached the actual blade and detached both sides from the blade from each other, basicly making the sword into 3 elements (and a bunch more vertexes!!);

with a much improved look ... now you can actually make a distinction between blade and handle(?) and also can distincly see the sharp tip of the sword ... as it should imo!!

so I tried to continue on this path and each side of the blade got detached into a right and left part .. but the results where minimamal if any at all;

so I decided it wasnt worth the vertexes to split the blade into 4 elements but the addintional cost of vertexes with 2 elements imo clearly shows that those are worth it ... on a high-lod at least ...

for refrence, the sword from the other side;



ps; it seems the game *prefers* swords in form of a 1/2 square stick, make it remotly flat and you'll have to deal with the above .. at least it seems to become much more obvious at that point ..
also wether I used a gloss-map or not didnt seem to matter ..


G