To illustrate my problem, I have this object with autosmooth applied at 30 degrees.
I wish to convert the resulting hard edges from autosmooth to marked sharp edges, or at the very least an edge selection. So the end result would appear as follows:
My goal is to commit the current smoothing splits, use the sharp edge selection and mark them as UV seams, as you should always have a UV split for every smoothing split anyway when baking normals.
Can anyone help me out with this?
It probably isn't possible to convert the selection Auto Smooth uses internally to define edges shown as sharp ones however it should be easy to select those edges additionally. In the 3d viewport header open Select > Sharp Edges to run the operator and create the selection.
In the operator options make the angle threshold to be the same as in the Auto Smooth option (so if Auto Smooth was set to 30 degrees make sure same angle is set in the Sharp Edges selection options). In the end same edges as ones used by Auto Smooth will become selected.
In edit mode: select an edge and then in the Select menu, find Select Similar. There, you will find by Face Angle. Tweak the angle in the operator panel until the edges you want are selected then look around your model and clean up selection before you apply Sharp Edges and Shade Flat to your edges.
Export the object as Wavefront "*.obj" and then re-import it.. (make sure about import and export options relating to edges) Your edges are now marked sharp.. (turn off auto smooth after import) You may even want to split those edges after selecting "similar".. I did this in Blender 2.79.. 2.8x etc may have the same functionality..
