Using Maya, I know that Smoothing Groups in 3dsMax, to the best of my knowledge, function in a similar manner to Soften/Harden Edges, but for UnrealEd 3 I can't seem to find a real difference between a your everyday Mesh and one with its Normals smoothed out. I see the difference in Maya, but when I export it to UnrealEd 3 as an ASE or Collada DAE, I can't see a noticeable difference between the static meshes.
In general, I've never used smoothing for really anything game related -- Is it specifically all that important? Is it just for non-normal mapped objects? I doing something wrong with the mesh? :poly144:
Replies
http://www.ericchadwick.com/examples/provost/byf1.html
http://www.ericchadwick.com/examples/provost/byf2.html
Yes they are important. You should consider reading the article I linked to above, specifially the "Welcome to Splitsville" bit in part 2.
most highpoly to low poly bakes will look best if the lowpoyl model is all smooth and its most certainly best for the performance to have as few verts in your model as you can and each hard edge /smoothing group border will split your verts so that each one can have its own normal so everything smooth also performs the best !