Well you wouldn't necessary make an entirely new model nor would you necessary need to make totally new UV maps etc but if the majority of the 3p model was going to be baked off the 1p model then you would want them as separate textures, where the 3p texture is also a smaller rez (thou you can do that on export). Only if things like just the mag where baked and the rest would use the same textures then it would be fine but most of the rest of the model would be wanting to use the old UVs and old textures etc but its probably not worth going down that rout tbh.
Also would help with performance a little for most people if it had separate 1p and 3p textures since the 1p texture would only ever be loaded if you had a kit with that weapon and you selected that weapon which for a pistol is pretty unlikley since its only in a few kits, officer, sniper etc and also only on one team (although that dosen't stop the enemy picking up the kit) but for the most point most players ingame wont ever see that pistol in a round and loading a low rez 3p texture is better.
Also every vBF2 weapon had separate 1p and 3p models/textures, although it didn't make as much seance for vBF2 epically when it came down to the unlocks etc but still helped with them since they had so many different types of weapons out there (unlike us where we have like 20 versions of the same rifle, at the end of the day its still really 1 type of weapon
).
So ye I would be really tempted to just optimize the current model a huge amount, maybe even remodel some of it and then bake off off the texture and maybe also some normals + AO too from the 1p model and have it on a separate, smaller, 3p texture
), after which I fixed said errors, did some last optimizations and finished it. Tri count stands at 5350.
