When exporting my object using the OBJ-exporter in 3ds max design 2009 the normals are always the same even if I have applied an “Edit Normals” modifier and changed the normals. What I'm trying to do is to smooth the surface of a round object by unifying the normals, but I get the exact same normals as without adding the “Edit Normals” modifier. Doesn't the exporter support this? Or am I doing something wrong? Reproduction steps: 1. Create a box 2. Add an “Edit Normals” modifier 3. E.g. select all normals and unify them (you see them change in 3ds max) 4. File/Export, Select OBJ as save type 5. Make sure normals are exported, click Export (optimize normals on/off doesn’t matter)

I've never heard about that OBJ supports curves or smoothing. And I can't find anything that says "it can". The only way is to use a function in the enignes (which reads the Wavefront *.obj Model) source code to smooth them by a re-calculation based on the exported normals.

Edit: Or you're going todo it the regular way and export the smoothed normals by using a different converter (you could try Blender import "3ds" and then export to obj... which actually only adds more datastructure instead of defining it as smoothing. %)

for example (*.obj vnormals and faces):
...
vn 0.853755 -0.382092 0.353618
vn 0.815119 -0.470656 0.337626
vn 0.768670 -0.554735 0.318400
vn 0.714835 -0.633473 0.296091
vn 0.654164 -0.706107 0.270974
vn 0.587237 -0.771966 0.243233
vn 0.514725 -0.830409 0.213202
vn 0.437269 -0.880886 0.181127
vn 0.355693 -0.922910 0.147313
vn 0.270730 -0.956084 0.112125
...
f 155//187 158//190 157//189 156//188
f 154//186 159//191 158//190 155//187
f 153//185 160//192 159//191 154//186
f 152//184 161//193 160//192 153//185
f 151//183 162//194 161//193 152//184
...

[Edited by - Hexenritter on February 5, 2009 10:34:02 PM]

With smooth normals I didn't mean some percentage, I have simply changed the normals on my object to look smoothed by letting vertices close to each other have the same normal. But when exporting 3ds max doesn't care about my edit normals modifier and just exports the default normals.

I have come to the conclusion that 3ds max's obj-exporter doesn't support this and have found a workaround, just as you said, by letting another program do the obj-exporting. (I use milkshape)