Smooth shading question

I’m trying to achieve the following effect, where this mess in Flat shading becomes really smooth and blends together with the Smooth shading:

I’ve tried to recreate the geometry and apply the smooth shading but it still stays like this:

Any ideas how to achieve this, or what keywords to search with? Thanks

Your vertices are not connect to another. Every parts of your model are individual. Smooth shading only works on connected faces.

I’m not sure what’s creating the shading effect, but in the smooth model on the right the vertices aren’t connected either. Feel free to check this out: https://www.dropbox.com/s/eh26u0wr6ckdq3d/ShadingTest.blend?dl=0