own patch [#30877] ply exporter to use shared faces when not exporting the normals

Faces should be exported with shared vertices whenever possible (otherwise this is simply a STL exporter). Since PLY stores normals per vertex it's understandable that we need 'individual' faces when exporting normals. However when this is not the case I think shared vertices should be default behaviour. This is what this patch implement.

Thanks Campbell for reviewing it. Thanks Aldo Zang for reporting it (off trackers, in the old fashion real life)

2 files changed, 3 insertions, 3 deletions

diff --git a/io_mesh_ply/__init__.py b/io_mesh_ply/__init__.py
index 851a6b7b..b940e934 100644
--- a/io_mesh_ply/__init__.py
+++ b/io_mesh_ply/__init__.py
@@ -96,7 +96,7 @@ class ExportPLY(bpy.types.Operator, ExportHelper):
             )
     use_normals = BoolProperty(
             name="Normals",
-            description="Export Normals for smooth and hard shaded faces",
+            description="Export Normals for smooth and hard shaded faces. Hard shaded faces will be exported as individual faces",
             default=True,
             )
     use_uv_coords = BoolProperty(
@@ -106,7 +106,7 @@ class ExportPLY(bpy.types.Operator, ExportHelper):
             )
     use_colors = BoolProperty(
             name="Vertex Colors",
-            description="Exort the active vertex color layer",
+            description="Export the active vertex color layer",
             default=True)
 
     @classmethod
diff --git a/io_mesh_ply/export_ply.py b/io_mesh_ply/export_ply.py
index 995bd0f5..cb981a13 100644
--- a/io_mesh_ply/export_ply.py
+++ b/io_mesh_ply/export_ply.py
@@ -106,7 +106,7 @@ def save(operator,
     vert_count = 0
     for i, f in enumerate(mesh.tessfaces):
 
-        smooth = f.use_smooth
+        smooth = not use_normals or f.use_smooth
         if not smooth:
             normal = tuple(f.normal)
             normal_key = rvec3d(normal)