Smooth shading creates odd shading I'm new to 3d modelling and I'm working on a chess set, while working on the bishop I ran into a shading problem when changing from flat to smooth shading.



After reading another post it seems the issue is that the smooth shading doesn't know what to do with the sharp edge so my idea was to bevel the edge so it can be smoothed. But when trying that the geometry got all kinds of messed up so what would another way to solve this issue be? Thanks in advanced.
Try selecting the edges you want to be sharp and then Ctrl+E "Mark Sharp". Then use the Edge Split modifier and disable angle-based splitting.