Glad I could be helpful
I was unaware that DX could not differentiate between hard and soft edges though. Wow. I wonder why that is? I assumed Maya's editor window was using DX for the 3D display. I guess it's going to be difficult to make complex geometry look like we want it, but it's not the end of the world.
It probably does one of two things: separates the faces automatically when you make them hard (and marks them in some way to differentiate between those vertices and others that are intentionally separated, so there are no issues if you make it smooth again), or separates the faces just before rendering.
By internals, I don't mean I've modeled every part of the gun, like springs, the internal trigger grouping, etc.
Don't worry, I didn't think so!
I can totally understand why some internals are desirable, as you've mentioned. Most first person shooters give the player a much higher-detailed version of each weapon than the NPCs -- this is more than just LoD in most cases, since the non-first-person version of the weapon usually doesn't get to that uber-high level of detail no matter how close you get (though there's no reason why you couldn't).
I was thinking similarly with your tanks in the Projects forum -- a tank's internals shouldn't even exist unless the player is about to enter it.
Jibb
EDIT: btw, "reality bytes" would make for a good signature
