I'm trying establish why I can't smooth shade geometry loaded with OBJLoader.

var loader = new THREE.OBJLoader(manager);

loader.load('/manmodel/js/man.obj', function (object, materials) {

    console.log(object);

    console.log(materials);

    man = object;

    man.traverse(function (child) {

        if (child instanceof THREE.Mesh) {

            child.geometry.computeFaceNormals();

            child.geometry.computeVertexNormals( true );

            child.material = new THREE.MeshPhongMaterial({

                color: 'white',

                shading: THREE.SmoothShading // <-----------  THIS IS THE PROBLEM

            });

        }

    });

    man.position.y = -10;

    scene.add(man);

});

This is the result:

If I remove the line computeFaceNormals() the model renders the same.
If I remove computeVertexNormals( true ) the object renders with no lighting (black) - so I know this is doing something.

If I change the color attribute of the MeshPhongMaterial in this code, the color changes, so I also know that this is working.

I have tried to use the vertex and normal helpers to establish what the problem is, but they fail because with BufferGeometry the faces and verticices are not stored as arrays.

I have also tried modifying the man.obj file to change the 's' values from 'off' to 1. This did nothing.

As I will be loading several .obj files for different human figures, generated in Blender, and each is currently around 2MB, I prefer to do the shading on the browser than to 'bake' it into the file if this would increase file size.

THE QUESTION(s): Am I missing something here? OR,
Is there a way to load the .obj file as standard Geometry, compute the normals, apply the shading, and then save as BufferGeometry?

ps. I may also need the normals for ray tracing further down the line.