I strongly doubt this is possible. Is there a way to smooth the normals between two separate objects?  Maybe some kind of option in the firefly renderer?  If not I guess I can just modify the geometry of both objects and align their normals in 3d studio max.  But I was hoping for a quick fix of some kind. 

The easiest way I can think of is to just fix the shading problems that occur from clashing geometry (from seperate objects) in photoshop once the render is done, but the tedious way is to align the geometry in a modeler.

Any advice?

Zanzo

There is an option in the render settings, under Manual, to smooth Polygons.  How well this works for you depends on the object.  If it has geometry that is too simple, parts will balloon.

On the Properties tab of each object you can uncheck the box for smoothing so it will not participate in the smoothing at render time, or you can also change the smoothing angle.  Hope this helps.

John

Using the inverse of the AO (Ambient Occlusion) node as displacement might give you some smoothing.

Thanks guys.

Zanzo, can you explain your situation a bit better (got pics?).  Are you looking for better 'Poser' renders?  Or rendering in some other app?  Are the object supposed to be welded together (like a single figure) ? Or two different Props that happen to be positioned close together?

One thing to keep in mind is... Poser will ignore any normals information in the .obj file - it always computes it's own - so don't bother spending time in the modeller to fix normals with any hope that will help.

If you can describe your situation better, I may have more answers - my S.T.O.M.P. utility was initially written for this exact purpose (smoothing normals between un-connected mesh surfaces), but the resulting .obj file's normals would be ignored by Poser.