When should I bevel?

cradicoe

I am really confused on when I should bevel or not?
For example if I am creating a building in Maya should I bevel the edge? or ?
I create things and I don't know if should move onto texturing because I don't know if the edges are correct.

zachagreg

Whats the target platform? Are you rendering these out in Maya? Are they going to a game engine? Are you making use of face-weighted normals? Is it a hero prop? Is it a modular kit piece. A lot of game art and CG is case-dependent so the more information about what you're doing the more we can help.

Something to help in the meantime though is to focus on your silhouette and how close the camera or player can get to the object. No sense in beveling the top point of a roof in a lot of cases if the player will be on the street at all times. If you need a bevel to match your silhouette then put in the geometry. If the bevel cannot be discerned from where the player is then you probably don't need the extra geo

cradicoe

I am creating a diorama of a 7-11 and its surroundings. It will be imported into unreal. So I would like the player to walk up to the edge of the buildings. So I would bevel for the extra detail on the edge if the player can be close to it? 

Mark Dygert

I look at the question more as "when should I remove the bevels"? To which the answer is, only when the bevels are the causes of an issue. 

If you're looking to cull bevels from the scene it's usually because...
1) Something else has probably gone horribly wrong. Blame shaders and programmers, it's usually their fault. Performance profiling doesn't lie.
2) The target hardware the game is running on is pretty much garbage. Reevaluate your business partners and corporate strategy.
3) The style doesn't need bevels. Most styles do, so this is usually a lie.

Look at them this way. They are the first thing to get crunched down as soon as the player steps back and the model starts to LoD. They are insanely helpful in getting good bakes, helping smoothing and avoiding that ultra-sharp "3D" corner, that rarely exists in the real world.

For a diorama scene, you'll be fine to use bevels

cradicoe

Mark Dygert said:

I look at the question more as "when should I remove the bevels"? To which the answer is, only when the bevels are the causes of an issue. 

If you're looking to cull bevels from the scene it's usually because...
1) Something else has probably gone horribly wrong. Blame shaders and programmers, it's usually their fault. Performance profiling doesn't lie.
2) The target hardware the game is running on is pretty much garbage. Reevaluate your business partners and corporate strategy.
3) The style doesn't need bevels. Most styles do, so this is usually a lie.

Look at them this way. They are the first thing to get crunched down as soon as the player steps back and the model starts to LoD. They are insanely helpful in getting good bakes, helping smoothing and avoiding that ultra-sharp "3D" corner, that rarely exists in the real world.

For a diorama scene, you'll be fine to use bevels

Thank you so much for the info. Okay I am using them!