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The answer below is 100% false for the following reasons:

As you can see in the left pictures the normals are messed up at the tip. the only reason the normals aren't messed up in his final product is because of 3x Subsurface applied to it. Then it no longer becomes low poly, see picture on left.

enter image description here

This is what happens when you smooth shade a cone:

enter image description here

Now maybe we can try again I ask again: How do you smooth shade a low poly cone?

enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ @moonboots Sure you can, as long as it remains low poly. $\endgroup$
    – AzulShiva
    Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 16:29
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    $\begingroup$ Hello and welcome. Please don't post the same question more than once. If you feel your previous question was incorrectly marked as duplicate, or the linked posts don't adequately address your issue, go back to your previous question and edit by pressing the Edit button below, including information of what you have tried, why it failed and how the duplicates don't address your issue. Once edited the question is automatically queued up for review so it can be reopened. $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos ♦
    Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 16:36
  • $\begingroup$ With 10 years of experience, you should know that it's impossible to keep a "low poly" as the original one and make it smooth at the same time without adding anything else, you can FAKE the effect like when you add a subdivision modifier and edges (like the answer below) or with displacement and texture bake. $\endgroup$
    – Emir
    Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 16:44
  • $\begingroup$ @Emir No. You can edit the normals. $\endgroup$
    – AzulShiva
    Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 16:49
  • $\begingroup$ Same as displacement, fake $\endgroup$
    – Emir
    Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 16:54

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Probably the best thing about blender is that even after a decade of modelling, when you think you know it all, you can still learn something new - in this case, it's that the best way to make a smooth shaded cone in blender is to not use a cone at all. Since blender deals best in quads (especially when shading), and a cone is full of tri's due to the top face being "closed/merged", it's best to use as cylinder instead.

Take a cylinder primitive (low poly works fine). Select the top face and scale it by .001.

Cone1

Select the top and bottom faces and inset by something really small like .0001.

Cone2

Add loop cuts to the top and bottom:

Cone3

Add a subdiv modifier, right click and shade smooth:

Cone4

Of course it's not a "true" cone, but you can make the "tip" almost infinitely small, so visually, it will be imperceptible, even at close distances. Simply due to the fact that the mesh is quad based, blender won't throw any wonky shading (the kind normally associated with tri's and n-gon's).

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