3d modeling for the workshop

[Maestro Eraclea]

Hi,

I submitted my first work on the workshop a few days ago and I'm currently working on another one (both inspired from Last Exile anime):


I encountered a nasty problem with my models and I couldn't get it fixed, there were hard-cut shadows all over. Since I'm a total noob in 3d modeling (the Guild's "Maestro" headdress was my first ever 3d model) I'll tell you what I did (on both items):
 - modelled the highpoly mesh
 - coated (best I could) with the lowpoly mesh
 - assigned materials (blender renderer)
 - baked normals
 - removed colors, put specular maps as color and baked textures
 - baked actual textures
 - baked ambient occlusion
 - removed colors (kept normal and specular info) and baked full render (for point light)
 - obtained cavity map from normal map
 - merged everything in color or normal/specular maps

programs used: blender 2.73a, GIMP 2.8.14
please tell me if I skipped something I really need to understand why shadows on my model are sharp even with normal info up; you can see an example of this on the preview image of my new work (the gold plate).

Also, I've got far more "I don't want to see this item on GoIO" votes for my Guild's "Maestro" headdress than I expected (12 out of 107) and so I would really ask you what is not good enough on that work that makes people downvote it (sadly user's complete feedback is not really encouraged on steam workshop).

Thank you for your time.

[Richard LeMoon]

Don't worry about the negative ones. 'Not interested' is the choice given, and somehow equates to a negative review, which is not accurate in most cases. People would just be not interested in having it themselves. Bad wording and system on Steam's part.

As for the harsh lines in the shading, I have not figured that out quite yet. There are a lot of export options for .obj. I tried opening one of the .obj examples and re-exporting it, then comparing the file contents. The one exported from Blender is a smaller file, with a few differences, and makes the harsh shading. I'll ask around.

[Maestro Eraclea]

After your reply I searched around some info about blender and unity3d export and it seems that blender does not export vertices with multiple normals and needs the edge-split modifier to get that sorted out (it's actually the same max an maya do, but more like "compatibility version").
So I exported my mesh with the edge-split mod but the result was exactly the same, either with 30° or 180° angle smoothing. Anyway since that looks like to be my problem I'll search more thoroughly.
Thank you at least for pointing me to the right (seems) direction.

About the voting system that was more or less what I figured out myself too. I mean, the downvote is more or less "that's ugly (or off-theme) and I don't wanna see it on the game" but as you said people may take it for "not going to use it".

[Maestro Eraclea]

Ok, nevermind, I forgot to tick the option "export normals" ...
As I said I'm a total noob on 3d modelling and more than everything on mesh exporting.

Now my models look awesome, so awesome I have to actually tune them "down"... I feel so dumb right now, I lost like hours to workaround this shading "issue".

PS: Sorry for the double posting but for some reason I couldn't modify my previous post.

[Richard LeMoon]

Awesome. I'll have to poke Lambert on how he does it. A Blender to Workshop/Unity tutorial would be a good thing once all the kinks are sorted.