Cybermonk posted at 4:55PM Sun, 11 December 2016 - #4292432

I think Poser and Daz Studio both have versions of the smooth shading. It helps when doing organic or smooth objects. You don't have to use extra subdivisions. Just get it in the ball park and let the smooth shading polish it up for ya. Also in edit mode you can add smooth shading to individual elements (vertices edges, polygons) under the shading/Uv tab on the tool shelf side bar.

Good advice, Cybermonk. In addendum, smooth shading can be useful for low poly modeling, and smoothing group parameters are supported by many export file formats and many software packages. Smooth shading is a very old technique to help organic objects appear smoother at a distance, but now with the advancement of PBR and Physical shaders, there are much better techniques to faking smooth surfaces and high-resolution details. However, it helps to always consider the tradeoff of higher poly counts vs. smooth shading effects, and a good rule of thumb is to always use geometry to create the best possible profile curvature for your object. Smooth shading alone can never cover up a lack of proper topological detail and sometimes can ruin the appearance of an object in close up shots and/or certain lighting conditions.

Also look into the Opensubdiv implementation in Blender, and the benefits this subdivision algorithm can lend to viewport performance while providing the necessary smooth subdivision surface geometry on objects which may be viewed in close-ups at render time, or in animation situations where only true geometry will deform properly.

http://graphics.pixar.com/opensubdiv/docs/intro_30.html

Opensubdiv is widely used in other applications, and the GPU-side real-time tessellation of geometry can be very useful in animated shots. The only drawback is that I don't believe Blender's FBX supports the export of edge creases in Opensubdiv at this time. I'm not sure about that, as I haven't fully read about it in the docs yet.

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