What exactly smoothing angles do.

Some of you might think, how do I get my model to look smoother, with out making a high-poly version?
Well heres how.

Model Before:


1. Go to your model in your project section and click on it.
2. Find smoothing angle
3. Adjust slider
4.Apply
5.Keep repeating until desired effect is achieved.

Model After:


Now I know a LOT of you already know about this, but some people may not, and this is for them.

 

Does it subdivide/interpolate the mesh to make it smoother or is this a normal-mapping thing?

 

Thats a good question. I think it changes the mesh. Not sure though.

 

I would guess it just smooths your normals based on angle. Anything below the threshold gets à smooth normal and anything above a hard. Nice even though preferably you fix this in your 3D-package

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoothing_group

 

It's not subdividing; it controls whether vertices are split for hard edges, so typically higher values result in fewer vertices. While this works well for some simpler meshes, in general I would recommend leaving normals on "import" and not using this, and use your 3D app instead, where you have specific control over hard edges (use the edge split modifier in Blender, for example). Otherwise you're making compromises--since hard edges are based on a single angle and nothing else--and your meshes don't look as good as they should. Typically you end up with some parts of the model smoothed that really shouldn't be.

--Eric

 

This pretty much. Smoothing angle can only be used on very smooth organics or very high poly models.

Low poly stuff should better be manually smoothed inside a 3d modeling app.