Ehhh.... so for the past year or so I bitch and cry at people all the time about there 3D models and get nothing but "I LIKE TO SEE YOU DO BETTER" and/or people defending absolute stuff. People aren't considering the poly count for Blockland what so ever any more, people complain about add-on's being laggy and all people do is tell them to get a better computer because they aren't being effected. If a user is using your Add-on and its lagging but not lagging on the default models then you should really consider What The Hell you are doing. I've seen the lowest detailed models with about 2000-4000 polys and the modeller has no idea what they're doing and yet the add-on still get approved (Yes you RTB MODS).
The most polys you want to use on a Torque Game Engine Character is 2500, thats a CHARACTER model not a weapon model.
Examples of utilising polys, my limit was 500 on both:
http://www.moddb.com/games/tsluecke/images/hunting-rifle2Poly Count: 485
http://www.moddb.com/games/tsluecke/images/tank-wip#imageboxPoly Count 452.
Example of a clueless Modeller: (No personal offence to him)
Poly Count: 1738
Compared to my Block Wars Version:
Poly Count: 586
While I was at my 3D course at the end of the last year, I was talking to my teacher about poly counts etc, he had 2 images of a desk that was around 200 polys and the same desk but 100 polys, I said wouldn't you be better off using the 200 one seeing as it looks better the the 100 and because you don't see many of them. He said yes but then said but if I was to use the 100 poly one I could have twice as many if I used it instead of the 200 one. This also applies to weapons, if you have 4 2000 poly weapons, that = 8000 polys, where if I was to use 4 500 poly weapons it'd only be 2000 polys total, thus saving a stuff load of lag. I could have up to 16 of the 500 poly weapons out at a time equivalent to 4 2000 poly ones. Every god damn poly counts, classic example of this in Blockland would be the bricks, hides unseen faces. I mean if a brick uses say 6 faces (12 polys) and my weapon uses 1000 faces (2000 polys) I could have an extra couple of hundred bricks out instead of a weapon.
3D art to me is ether, making a fantastic model out of a limit you have, for example 2000 polys for a character and 1024x1024 for the texture. Or a model that has a limitless poly count but its textured so well it looks realistic. Those are the only things I expect as true works of 3D art, its what the best you can make out of what you have.
Badspot used to tell me how my models sucked, and I finally woke up and improved on that, I wonder when the hell everyone else will to.
