I think this is an important discussion for all the artists making models to be used in Game Guru.
Models should have smoothing groups set correctly to get the best visual quality for your models.
Most modeling programs have an auto smoothing group feature as well as the ability to manually tweak
them. The Wings3d modeling program refers to smoothing groups as hard and soft edges, so depending on
the modeling program they may have a different name.

The importance of smoothing groups can not be stressed enough. Game Guru needs this information to be supplied in
.x file so it can render the models correctly.

I have attached a screen shot showing the difference. The concrete pipe in the foreground is the default model with out smoothing
groups and the other one is with the corrected vertex normals using smoothing groups. Both models have the same number of polygons.

Have you tried light mapping both models?

there has always been an issue with smoothing group and the shaders or the rendering system, some things work, but most don't after light mapping.

But this is a much needed function for sure.
Thanks for posting.

Yes, after light mapping both models, the vertex normals for the object with smoothing groups no longer
looks right. Most likely this is because Lee is not using the normals for the model when calculating the light map.
If you switch between the bake and real-time you can see the correct normals are there when rendering with realtime.
Hopefully Lee will update his light mapper but in the mean time the models need correct smoothing groups.
The model without the smoothing groups is rendering flat shaded which may not look that bad on a concrete pipe
but more complex models look terrible. If we make sure the models have the correct smoothing groups Lee will be able
to use the data from the model for calculating the light maps correctly. I know this may anger some of the artists who
have already released models and would need to fix the smoothing groups, but I believe that in the end it will be worth it.

I have my smoothing groups exported, in hopes that this will be taken care of someday. I believe most of the modeler's will have done this already. So lets keep out fingers crossed for it.

Thanks for posting

Some of the default models that come with Game Guru do not have smoothing groups.
For example the concrete pipe in the screen shot above. Hopefully with a discussion we can get
everyone to stick with one standard.