Should I bevel edges for a First person game asset?

cjjacobs97

I am making a weapon for first person use and would like to know if I should be beveling the edges on the model. I cannot for the life of me figure out this part or how I am supposed to uv beveled edges. Should I keep them beveled, or make them hard edges and use baking for the softness? I have pretty much every edge and panel modeled in because it will be a portfolio piece, but Is this the way games like the nee call of duty games are making models?

Ghogiel

Just look at what they are doing. eg https://www.artstation.com/artwork/V0oeR

You probably don't need a 3 edge bevel, 2 should usually get you to where you want to be, as can be seen if you look closely at the silhouette in the higher res images. Some edges have an obvious 2 edge bevel. Other times you can see it's sharp no beveled edge. The reason they aren't beveling every edge is probably a combination of factors, due to where the edge is, does it affect silhouette,   how sharp the edge actually is, and the UV seam placement. 
like I doubt they are beveling the picatinny rails for example, but might be wrong

gnoop

The fps weapon is not my area  but I believe all those extra edges are absolutely redundant.   You can get same shading  by either face weighting vertex normals,  makeing vertex normals still perpendicular  to main surface  on floating geo  and leaving  the shading strictly for a normal map,  projecting vertex normals  and  so on.

IMO the idea of doing extra support edge loops for killing shading artifacts is form old times when 3d packages lacked  any vertex normal editing tools.  

So in a word  make your bevel where it's visually sound  only.

ps . I would personally get rid of those tiny parallel edge loops at all and  project all vertex normals from lod02 . So your lod01 would work same way  dx11 tessellation works typically.    Elevating  vertexes  to make a silhouette but keeping  vertex normal strictly in same position as they would be in lod02.

I understand  lods are not that important maybe for a weapon in your hand   but would it be a regular game object those tiny bevels would make a huge headache with lod switching.