For an example see:
http://www.btinternet.com/~chapterhonour/azoth.zip
The model azoth_pre is the version in the released travail mod, and seams are visible on the insides of his legs. azoth_post has been fixed in this regard through use of a perl script. The script was designed to unify the normals of all sets of vertices which
a) occupy the same position on the model in every frame
and
b) have the same colour pixel lying under their position on the skin
The script applies b in this case for the sake of the metal prongs that protrude from the belt. Their trianges form a continuous mesh with the torso, but because the colour at the vertex is different from the torso they get a distinct normal. This gives us a smoothing group!
I will admit that I discovered this worked well on the model by luck. My plan was to create an extra skin for the model with just solid blocks of colour to define the smoothing groups, then have the script just delete the extra skin when it was done. As it happens, if your seams are skinned carefully then this isn't necessary.
Another example that might be quicker to test is the waterfall:
http://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=60335&start=90&end=90
If you open the model in QMe and save it again so that the vertex normals get reset, then you should be able to see the difference it makes by looking at the water coming over the lip of the waterfall, the "squareness" is higher. In this case a script was necessary to fix the normals because even in gmax the segments of the model were physically disconnected.