Dear All,
I wish to smooth a mesh that I already have created UVs for. The issue is that unlike what I have imagined, the UVs get a bit distorted when I smooth them (I’m using Maya 2016, UVed with bonus tools). I wish to know how to smmoth my meshes without destroying the nice UV layouts? I tried but did not found a way to smooth them without smoothing the UVs as well in the Mesh>Smooth settings. I did plan to use normal maps to get rid of those jagged edges but fact is they can fake only how the light breaks off the surface, not the edges shapes.
What should I do? Use displacement maps or is there a way to smooth a mesh without messing up its UVs?
Thanks in advance.
Edit: forgot to say, the meshed do have supporting edge loops to keep them nice and tight. As a result, the deformation is not that spectacular in my meshes (hard surface stuff). Even still the UVs get messed up.
Smoothing UVed meshes
not 100% sure on this one but try exporting the unsmoothed, nicely UV’d object as an .OBJ file, then reimport that same OBJ right back into your scene. that kind of resets the geometry and gets rid of any weird history that could be screwing up your UV’s.
Thanks for the update.
I deleted the history of the objects, then smoothed them but still I get the distortion ( I check it with the usual checkermarked shader).
Anyway, I appreciate the help. Looks like I will have to bake some normal maps to get that nice tight, but not jagged edges 
freezing history doesn’t get rid of everything. in fact, there are MANY things freezing history doesn’t get rid of.
good luck.
If you can post pictures of the uvs smoothed vs unsmoothed it would be much easier to determine the problem.