ive been using the bevel hotkey my entire time using blender but im watching a tutorial that uses the modifier. in what situations would i want to use the modifier over just non modifier way?
If you don’t want to permanently change the mesh with a bevel, a modifier will work. You can come back to it later after modelling a bit more, change how much the mesh is bevelled or even delete the modifier if you decided later that a bevel was not a good idea.The modifier really gives more control
As Unyxium says, for where you don’t want to change any data, but want to get rid of that pesky cgi “hard-edge”, I use the modifier. It’s also useful for playing about with geoemtry until you find what you want then applying to turn it into hard geometry as it allows to to experiement with belve profiles before commiting.
Modifier if I just want to soften edges, tool if I want to alter the shape.
By the way, is there any way to have different types of bevel modifiers controlled differently? Maybe this one section needs this many segments in this profile, and that one needs that many segments in that profile? Using Vertex Groups ends up beveling every edge possible with a vertex and not specific edges. Only solution I can think of is splitting the model into different objects.
I would think a combination of vertex groups and edge bevel weights would be able to go some way towards what you are after.
Unfortunately I can only choose one of them.