If I smooth a low poly then it wont be effective. Do I export it smoothed, or soften the normals or bake a high poly? Say for instance i want to have a pillow as an asset. It needs to look smooth and no sharp lines. I mainly use maya.
Softening normals should work provided your edges aren’t too sharp. Can you show a picture of your model?
UE4 does a oddly effective job of this on it’s own in some cases. I’ve made low poly stuff and had it import into UE4 looking nuts because of it. You just have to define the hard edges really. But you can use any number of methods. Normal Maps, Smoothing Groups, etc. (or all of them). I use Blender, and I generally just define where I want the hard edges to be and let UE4 soften whatever else is there on it’s own and leave it as is. It usually works out exactly as I plan for it to but that may have something to do with my settings that I’ve ignored.