Bevels

Bevels are a partially* discontinued graphical Roblox feature, which rendered smooth, 45-degree edges on meshless Parts. They were a prominent graphical element, contributing to Roblox's aesthetic over a period of five years.

Bevels were introduced to the Roblox client in April 2005. They were removed some time before Roblox's release; however, they were re-added on October 30, 2007. Similar to many of Roblox's graphical elements at the time, they were automatically enabled or disabled by default depending on the user's graphics card. However, they could be manually set in the Studio settings, in addition to optional antialiasing.^[1]

Deprecation[]

In early 2013, Roblox began undergoing a shift towards a more modern visual aesthetic. As a result, part bevels were removed on April 4, 2013^[2], ultimately being replaced by outlines (which would later be deprecated as well). In a Roblox Blog post by Gemlocker, the following reasons were stated:

We’ve turned off bevels–they hurt performance and don’t fit our vision for the future look of ROBLOX–and shipped new rendering code that improves performance, particularly in the context of rendering static environments on slow and/or dated hardware.

—Simon Kozlov, Roblox Blog

The deprecation of bevels was previously announced on the Roblox Blog on March 27th—eight days before removal—along with other rendering changes.^[3] As illustrated by comments, the initial response was mixed. Some users lamented the aesthetic impact the removal of bevels would have on certain places, with some requesting a legacy option for such cases. Others, however, lauded the change as a major performance upgrade or even as a stylistic improvement:

The bevels are the best thing about ROBLOX. Why are they being removed when most places rely on them to provide a rounded effect on blocks?

SuperSamioWorld

I’m glad you’re doing this guys. When bevels first came out, I was already worried about performance. Some of the places of that time looked worse also. Still, a BevelMesh object would be nice to have for the odd builder who needs it.

Gamehero

The now abstract (removed) instance Bevel Mesh (BevelMesh) instance existed, which was a mesh instance that served to bevel parts, similar to how they were prior to bevel removal. Third-party plugins exist for Roblox Studio to simulate bevels in the modern engine. Classic Roblox simulators Super Nostalgia Zone and RetroStudio both contain dynamic emulations of bevels^[4]; the latter offers this as an option for several time periods, but does not include them by default, on the basis of subpar performance.

Bevels on characters[]

Bevels were historically responsible for the same rounded edges as seen on the R6 character, with no distinction being made from the character limbs and other parts in the world. However, after they were disabled on Parts, code was retained for the limbs in order to preserve the existing character style—as such, they continue to have a limited presence on Roblox, and may not be considered entirely deprecated.

Gallery[]

Bevels on one part.

Bevels on Wood parts.

References[]