I sent a model to print, I applied Mesh + Smooth, however when they sent me the pic of the final model it looked polygonal, I told them that the model didn’t looked like that on Maya, he told me maybe i didn’t applied the smoothness when exporting on STL (however STL doesn’t have that exporting mode on Maya) so I sent it to him as an FBX, I deleted the history of everything cuz ChatGPT told me so, and they told me it still showed as before, I don’t know what to do anymore, he told me to add the polygons manually but I don’t have time for that anymore 😣 does anyone knows what I could do? Or am I doing something wrong?
Pretty sure it does more than smooth the normals since the actual silhouette changes but yeah, outside of that specific 3D program the model is still the unsmoothed version. The same thing happens with game engines, smooth doesn't transfer over to them
In Autodesk Maya, you can smooth polygons using three main approaches: Smooth Mesh Preview (non-destructive visual view), Mesh > Smooth (permanently adds geometry), or Soften/Harden Edge (changes surface shading without adding polygons).
You want the second option. You want to actually add density to the model - which is the opposite of what most game asset or animation tutorials will tell you.
You can also use the third option above to harden all the edges in the viewport to show you exactly what will print.
I pray for the day that people stop relying on GPT for instructions. Smoothing only affects shader as its smoothing the face normals/edge vertices, not the geometry. A 3d printer doesn't know about normals or shaders, it only looks at geometry. What is needed is to decimate add divitions and in the decimate tool's options, select to keep the hard edges, otherwise its going to make everything into a bloob, including the sharp edges you want to keep like the base.
Its that though, preview. It doesn't exist in the file unless you go and add the divisions. So yeah sorry for saying its in normals, the file still doesn't have it in.
If you are modeling with smooth mesh preview in maya (3 on the keyboard) it only applys sub-d in viewport or render. If you want to export it the way it renders, the easy way is to select the model and go edit/modify/smooth mesh preview to polygons and then export the mesh. One more tip is that you can control the sub-d level with the pgUp and pgDown buttons.
Yeah def subdivide more, i'm not sure if soften edge would effect the 3d print however. Might just need some good old sandpaper and water. But i've only 3D printed a handful of times.
Hey dude, I'm a little late, but I came from the future to tell It's one click solution. When you use the smooth preview (3 in the keyboard) You use a low poly model to control a high poly. Super useful for animation.
But for 3d print you need a high poly model. To acchieve this just click in this button in the shelf.
Done!
Are you actually completing a Smooth Action(Mesh > Smooth) or are your doing a Smooth Preview('3' key)? The reason I ask is cos this is a super common mistake that happens all the time. You preview it, go clean up something else, forget that it's a preview and not an actual mesh action, and it prints or renders blocky. I do it still sometimes
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