whats a good roundabout number for the average game model? i've got one i'm working on, and so far she's got 3190 triangles... so i think i'm doing good, but right now its just her bare naked body (no clothing added yet).... she's pretty detailed for being so low poly too... i'm pretty shocked actually... See her here... oh yea, while i'm at it, does anyone know of any good bones setup tutorials? need to get this animated once i'm done building...

I don't get why you're making her naked. If she's going to be wearing clothes, then model the clothes on her from startup. Making a full nude body, then adding an extra layer of clothes over it is a rather wasteful use of polygons.

That said, your current poly count isn't bad. It's about what my currently being worked on model is (however, mine's a fully clothed and armored medieval soldier, it's also triangulated). If your game isn't going to have tons of action on the screen, or lots of other high poly things moving around, you could probably take her quite a bit higher. Though, don't intentionally push yourself.

Check out this thread, it has a number of links to low poly modeling tutorials. Maybe they can help you, or just offer up some advice.

Yeah, unless you plan on having her wear some kind of skin-tight bodysuit (which is WAY overused, BTW), she needs some clothing as a part of her polys.

Really, the "average game model" differs. It honestly depends on your requirements. If I was doing a single player game where only two or three models might be on the screen at once, and I expected to support a minimum of the GeForce 4/Radeon 9500, I'd be tempted to use 8-10k poly models. But if I planned on having, say, a dozen onscreen and be playing online, I'd keep it to 2k polys, maximum.

This also depends on your scenery; If I wanted to have a real lush forest with lots of trees, I might have to keep my models around 2k-3k. (But then again, a large forest will likely be more fill-rate limited than geometry...)

Also, don't forget to take into account UV seams -- The more you have, the more vertices you will need (to hold the discontinous map edges).

To sum it up, it really depends on a lot of things. :)

no no no... just the base body right now... once i get the body finished, i'm building her clothes into her base mesh... they aren't gonna be seperate...

the way i've always modled, and been shown it helps when building accessories... is to build the characters base shape. then build the clothing from there (doing hi-poly characters its easier to get a good realistic shape, if the base body looks real..) i'm just building her base shape from triangles from the start... that way ican control the amount of Tri's, and placement of verts, once the model is finished, and skinned

That's not a bad way to model, especially in high poly modelling. But, as you will see with most lowpoly tutorials, the best way to make game characters, is to have the design set on paper, import that image into the modelling app, then create your model as close to your design as possible on the first pass. After that, there are techniques to lower the poly count in trouble spots to further optimize the mesh. But you will find it difficult to model a basic body, then arrange the mesh to show clothes later. Unless you intend to have different pieces of clothing or armor that are interchangable and will be removed from the model often, but that is a whole other can of worms, especially when doing textures. If you know how you want her to look finished, you should be working towards that from the start.
Rigging bones and animating is very subjective to the application you are using. Also, poly count is subjective the engine you are using, and what the minimum hardware spec will be for the game. Will you have detailed environments that will eat a lot of polys? How many enemies do you plan to have on screen at once? How hi-res will your skinning textures be? Will your character be holding weapons or have accessories that need modelled?
3000 polys isn't bad, especially with modern 3d engines. As for bones, skinning, etc, what program are you using? Most have lots of tutorials, but you really need to search by application.

The "Average" game engine today pushes around 15-30 million polys per second when fully lit, textured, etc. (you know, actually playing the game). That gives you about half a million polys per frame to work with. Assume 100-200k of those are eaten up by geometry, another 50k by particle effects and such, and you have your baseline figure for how many polys you have to work with per character.

If the game is going to have just one or two characters on screen at a time, it's ok to have models with 50k+ polys. If there is going to be 10 or 20 models, you want to think closer to 5k ish.

Of course, this all depends on how optimized the engine is and what else is being done. Video cards can, theoretically anyway, push as many as 100 million poly second ([rolleyes]), and some older engines (like Quake 2) can easily hit the 50 million mark.

well, right now she's at 2458 with basic clothing, and hair... chest area is set up for different textures (if i wanna paint a breastplate, or plain shirt.. or even a bikini...) torso is set right now for the same thing... (bikini bottom, pants, shorts, etc...) simple boots, etc... she's basicaly gonna be set for textures not for actuall clothing models (Think of Everquest when it first came out, how you had the basic models, and when you changed clothing, the body texture changed... only my model isn't boxy like theirs were) i've got alittle more optimizing to do still... still some odd areas that i need to smooth out, but all in all, its coming along good...

as soon as i get her done, i'm going to build a world for her... which is going to be a pain i can tell already... probably just a simple interior 'scape... probably a dungeon setting, maybe temple ruins... not quite sure yet, got some layout sketches in progress...

i'm just working on a solo project... basicaly a single player/single level "walkabout" demo... something to throw into my portfolio when i finaly get shit finished... i'm building my own "engine" i guess you could call it? using DirectX, giving just basic controlls... movement, mouse lookaround (in first person view) changing views from First Person view, to third person (behind the model, to show her animations and stuff...) with walking/running, jump... idle ("I'm waiting, any second now"), maybe some attack animations, though i won't have any enemy's and shit... because i'm not gonna get into the AI part of a game yet... (maybe i'll do an update to it after i finish it, and give it some more details like that)