Yeah it's a biatch. I think there are a couple of other 3D modeling packages that can define the weight of a bevel without the need for actual double edges, but alas. I recently made a WW2 MP5 in Maya. I learnt quite a bit about hard surface modeling. It aint as easy as it seems. It's a cliche, but practise makes perfect…
Hmm our weapons modeler takes around a week for a hipoly gun i think, depending of its complexity. It's the same guy that did the UT series guns. I'm guessing UT2k7 guns take about the same since it's pretty much the same stuff we're doing. As for hipoly topology, there's quite a few ways to approach things, mostly…