I'm making robot models exported from SolidWorks look better by smoothing the shading of the faces, here is my work-flow:
- Import mesh
- Remove double vertices
- Smooth faces
- Apply EdgeSplit
- Export final model
This works great but I am not sure of one thing, from what I understand the EdgeSplit modifier only modifies the vertices normals on specific regions of the mesh (given the split angle).
When applying the work-flow above on some meshes (example), the poly count changes and I don't understand why:
- Original file: 230 vertices
- Removed doubles: 226 vertices
- Smooth faces: 226 vertices
- After EdgeSplit: 421 vertices
Why is the EdgeSplit affecting the poly-count in some cases and other not?