the fbx exporter on maya 2012 and on blender can get stuff into udk with smoothing intact. also you could try collada, or export to anything that keeps your smoothing and use the autodesk fbx converter.
Using a single smoothing group is horrible for things like guns or assets with lots of ~90 degree angles. Basically if you see any extreme shading on the lowpoly with a single smoothing group, then it's a bad idea.
hm... i think its the same, but for me it also works to just minimize and maximize the viewport. and although its mostly smoothed models it does happen to not smoothed ones, too, at least over here...
Having a synced tangent space means less hacking on the mesh to make normal maps look good and seamless resulting in less vertices as you need fewer smoothing splits and smoothing control loops.
I personally haven't had any problems with Textools and auto-assigning smoothing groups/ splitting uvs by smoothing group. Though I haven't tried Polyunwrapper so I can't really compare.
Seem like a smooth group problem, just try reassigning smooth group to one just click on clear all before doing it. If it doesn't solved also verify that the vertex is weld. Regards Peter
Seems to have good meshflow, any chance we can see the model with the wireframe not showing so we can see how it smooths? Looks like there is a couple wonky smoothing groups here or there.
Isn't smooth going to increate the poly count and subdivid the faces? But the lines on his models are all curvy... compare to smoothed model, the lines are still straight, just very short and form a big curve.
What shading method do you use in your path tracer? Normals are usually baked at a smooth shaded mesh. And so you should use smooth shading in your engine too. Then the normals should fit.
Looks like smoothing option to me. On top of the screen. Is it set to 0 ? Smoothing averages your movements so you dont get macro lags in your stroke . So indeed there is inertia.