You can safely remove the edges in edge editing by selecting them and pressing "remove" in edit edges mode of edit poly modifier.

Also you can create the two missing edges, but you do not have a vertex there yet.

The upper issue is hard to spot.

[attachment=32326:62sdluqfhint.jpg]

finally

I remove edges - same result. Add 2 edges - same result

Isn't the whole point of smoothing groups so you avoid having to manually create an edge loop though? Note I've only used blender, and 'make sharp' on an edge does (I think) the same thing, it internally forces a duplicate of vertices on edges so they can have different normals and not share the same normal.

Well for one, he didn't say he was going to bake normal maps, and I don't bake normal maps all the time for every object in my game. For a cartoony looking game like zelda wind waker or so, you wouldn't need normal maps in your entire game really.

Sub-surface division will take a quad and split it into 4 quads down the center. It doesn't make edges sharper. The "make sharp" on an edge I believe is a feature to lock the edges from moving during sub-dividing. (IE make a cube in blender and apply sub-division, it will warp the cube into a sphere, instead of just making the edges stay and subdivide around them). I always manually put edge loops around my models, more control and doesn't add more than a minute of work. But also, as said if I don't intend to use a normal map at all or at some far away LOD, then I need those loops in the low-poly, not just the high poly, otherwise I will get artifacts like this guy.

I'd look, but blender can't open MAX files.

The way to fix this is to bake a normal map from the high poly, triangulate the low poly model before baking.

The other way is to control the normals, you can use edge loops or you can edit the normals by hand, you can also separate the edges.

Remember that you want two normal maps, a OpenGl normal map and a DirectX one. The difference between the two is the inverted green channel.

If you use a lot of different software you are going to pass between OpenGl and DirectX, the marmoset image looks like it is miss reading the normal map.

Always divide your low poly model into triangles when baking, if you plan on exporting it, most exporters triangulate the model meaning that the baked normal map is no longer correct if it was quads.

The reason you had the pinching was because you had a triangle in a quad model, keep it quads. Triangles have a 40% of subdividing correctly the other 60% they fail, it's only on a flat surface that it doesn't matter.

I remove edges - same result. Add 2 edges - same result

Strange. I will have a look at the mesh.

Thanks everyone for help. On the base of that topic, your messagers and articles that i found I will remodel blade and show what I get

I could not open the max file, it was made with newer version I have. You should save it in compatibility mode, or as an alternative, provide .obj of mesh.