I have made a simple gun model in Blender (620 polys). I have pressed set smooth in the modelling window, producing the result in image 1. Then, when rendered, it produces image 2, with weird shading. Using set smooth makes it look completely solid in the render. I have tried re-calculating normals.
See attatched images. Thanks 
you know you have to be in edit mode and have all faces selected before you re calculate normals rite? cos thats what it looks like, however try end eliminate what its not. try rendering set solid, is this giving black areas. perhaps there are double faces, whats your topology like? triangles ?
Yup I’m always in edit mode with all verts selected for recalculating normals. My topology was a mix of quads and tris (about 95% quads though), but I tried converting all to tris, but it didn’t work.
UPDATE: Whoops I think I solved it. I turned on “No v. normal flip” before I set smooth and it looks much better.
Thanks for your help 
WAIT NOT SOLVED!!! :|:|:|:|:|
Now when I export to 3DS format and open in Quick3D, it doesn’t show up as smooth! (Normally does for models).
HELP!
Can’t be sure without the mesh, but make sure that you are indeed recalculating normals outside. If you are using smoothing on a complex object with many different types of surfaces (flat combined with round) then I would smooth the mesh at render time with the auto smooth set to around 30-32 degrees and up to 45 degrees for objects that are low rez, but you still want them to smooth. This way the angles that are greater than these values stay flat and equal to or less than values smooth in the render. It appears to me that smoothing is applied to the object as a whole and is therefore creating these artifacts at render time, because Blender is trying to make all things smooth and distorting the mesh. Try auto smooth. I don’t know if it carries through in 3DS format though, since I haven’t tried it.
I tried auto-smooth already. I have used set smooth loads and it always used to export to 3DS properly.
Just attach your blend file to your post or other host site rather than going backwards and forwards with everyone apart from you working blind.
Can you not just set the view to smooth shading in Quick3D if that’s ultimately what you want or try exporting as another format?
OK. I thought it would be a setting in Blender that I missed. Quick3D has no option to change whether the object is smooth or not. If it says smooth in the object data, it does smooth. If it says solid, it does solid. And I need to use 3DS format.
I have managed to export another model in 3DS format with smoothing, so it must be something wrong with the blender file. Is there a way that I can copy JUST the mesh data across and not the normals?
