Don't mix those two together, they are completely different. Edge split actually splits the mesh completely, while autosmooth only splits the normals. Thus with autosmooth there are still shared vertices and averaged vertex normals.

@Alexander Gavrilov (angavrilov)
Are you sure about the averaged normals being there when using autosmooth? I have created a simple mesh that I have autosmoothed but the mesh (struct Mesh in code) doesn't seem to have them. Am I looking at the wrong data structure? Is there another way to access per vertex information that has averaged normals?
I have attached an image to detail what the mesh looks like and the Mesh vertex data that goes with it.

Dec 12 2018, 5:25 AM · Cycles, BF Blender

Dec 8 2018

Marco Alamia (Macro) added a comment to D3998: Cycle Bake - Average Normals for projection.

In D3998#91498, @Alexander Gavrilov (angavrilov) wrote:

In D3998#91490, @Marco Alamia (Macro) wrote:

It is exactly for edge splits and autosmooth.

Don't mix those two together, they are completely different. Edge split actually splits the mesh completely, while autosmooth only splits the normals. Thus with autosmooth there are still shared vertices and averaged vertex normals.

Dec 8 2018, 3:44 AM · Cycles, BF Blender

Dec 7 2018

Marco Alamia (Macro) added inline comments to D3998: Cycle Bake - Average Normals for projection.

Dec 7 2018, 4:03 AM · Cycles, BF Blender

Marco Alamia (Macro) updated the diff for D3998: Cycle Bake - Average Normals for projection.

Thank you for your time and for the review.

Dec 7 2018, 4:02 AM · Cycles, BF Blender

Dec 2 2018

Marco Alamia (Macro) updated the diff for D3998: Cycle Bake - Average Normals for projection.

No changes from the previous revision - I have a feeling that I did something wrong when submitting the previous time since I have flagged some of the review as "Done" but the tool insist they are "Unsubmitted". I am not clear if it's my fault but it should be harmless to resubmit the same review.

Dec 2 2018, 6:30 PM · Cycles, BF Blender