Just a quick note to say that I figured out a workaround for my smoothing issues. By actually breaking the mesh up into sections, I can have different portions smoothed and still have hard edges between them. The only downside is that it bumps up the vertex count by a few hundred (the poly count is of course unchanged)... I don't know how much of a difference that makes to performance, if any. Anyway, some example pics:
![Image](http://members.iinet.com.au/~sayers/mike/eh/smooth1.jpg)
Before, with smoothing applied over the entire mesh. Note the odd dark patches where it attempts to smooth between polys with a large angle between them.
![Image](http://members.iinet.com.au/~sayers/mike/eh/smooth2.jpg)
After, with the edges where the mesh is broken up. (i.e. poly's do not 'share' vertices at the edges). Maybe not the best mesh to use as an example because it has a lot of edges at the back, but you can see the tops of the wings are smoothed well.
![Image](http://members.iinet.com.au/~sayers/mike/eh/smooth3.jpg)
And finally, I tried to be a bit tricky and add some engine glow effects to the model.. but it didn't work because a) transparency didn't work as I expected! And b) the lighting needs to be disabled on that poly for it to look right.. ah well, worth a try
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/)