Hi blender community.
I’m french, so excuse my poor english… hihi 
I’ve got a question on blender, It’s a long time I search the answer.
How to create differents smoothing groups without spliting faces ?
(An image is better than 1000 explains… :Z)
so like this :
But without spliting vertices… :Z
pleaseeeeeee help me…
Thanks a lot.
unfortunately, in the moment you can’t. some sort of poor-man’s-smoothing- groups can be achieved by setting Autosmooth and then tweaking the angle value. however, this highly depends on your geometry.
marin
you can also use creases for subsurfs [control+e on selected edges]
also, extrude can often be used instead of split to create seams
Argggggg no it’s not realy clean…
For example, for my caracter, I split the hands, an lot of parts to make seams edges…
So after, to unfall UVs the selection of edges is very anfull…
I hate that.
So if I extrude on place, it will create some triangle, and explode polygon counter, for game, it’s not realy good.
With wings for example it’s very simple, select edge, set on hard edge and enjoy…
hmmmmm so I’ll wait for blender manage smooth ID’s
You can’t set hard edges but you can set selected faces as hard. It won’t look great but if it’s only a game.
I’m not sure I see what advantages that would give other than define a border, which you can do using multiple materials can’t you?
ah no, I think it’s very important for game design to use hard edges.
It permit to delimite correctly differents part of the caracter mesh, make better cloths corners.
Manage points normal is very important for game modeling.
It permit to create angle for a better render for realtime animation. Etc etc…
I always use hard edges for a lots of reason. And when it’s well plased, it represent a very powerfull tool.
I think it’s impossible to make good job without hard edges on LPM modeling and animations. Realy.
Afternoon, I’ll poste an old caracter I made, with and without hard edges, you’ll see what I want to explain. 
:Z
This is the last model for our game FFC
I prefer left render than right. Because all elements are really his own normal detached from others.
The aim is to simulate differents parte on the same mesh.
I use and abuse this features to obtimize my mesh for game engine.
Yes, I see what you mean. That’s what the subsurface creases do. Not sure if you can use them in the game engine though. If you can, just select the edges like z3r0 d said and do shift-e. I would think you should be able to because you can set the subd level to 0 which doesn’t increase poly count but I don’t know how the developers have implemented it.
ps You might get more info in the game engine part of Elysiun instead of Blender General.
Most of the games that I’ve seen use smooth shading on the entire mesh, regardless if there’s a 90 degree angle or not. Yes, you do want to accent sharp corners but that’s up to the texturing, not so much the shading method of the model. Don’t let the shading algorithm be the only thing that gives a model depth and sharp accents to folds, creases, and such. Add shadowed areas to the UV texture where you know there will always be shadow. Game artists to this all the time to character’s faces. If they didn’t draw in the shadowing for their cheecks, lips, nose, and so on it wouldn’t look right at all.
Now, if this is going to be a very cartoony looking game (like 3D Mario games where he has only an eye and hat-logo texture), then it order to add creases and such, you’ll probably have to increase the polygon count around those edges that you want to be hard.
I’m sure the method you are talking about is possible. I’ve seen similar things in Doom3 recently, but I’m not sure if Blender can do it. In any case, texturing the model correctly makes all the difference.
Metsys, I dont want to simulate shadows and elements separating.
I want an good shader render before texturing.
After it’s a real pleasure to texturing…
Look at the final render I made with spliting elements (the only real solution I found of my probleme).
https://blenderartists.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=32727&highlight=
All the maps are made with illustrator to make more toony.
So I place some shadows for cloths corner, simulate glasses reflect, simulate haires volume… etc etc…
But for exemple, I want to disociate glasses from head, top closes and bottom closes. etc etc…
But visibly no solution exist at the moment…
Nevermind I’ll wait, and now I’ll continue to work with elements splitting
:Z