Looking at the 3rd picture from your first post, i thought you could do with some help on the optimization side. For your project this isnt really necessary but just for future reference i made this quickly...
This goes for anyone making game models, as long as you line up the ends...
a few different angles would make it easier to critisise. if you look at this picture, you can see that, unless the perspective of your render is obscure, your models too fat. it also shows that your front sights are wrong, no rear sights and no bolt to cock the gun. theres also the case of...
ergonomics
'The applied science of equipment design, as for the workplace, intended to maximize productivity by reducing operator fatigue and discomfort.'
now look at your design and apply that kind of thinking to it... starting with the grip. keep going :)
theres no need in telling us the polycount as well as the tri count. you have to be watching the triangles, not the polies. can you post a wireframe? its kinda hard to see where the 3500 polies are hiding...
...editable mesh gives you the tri count. select everything you want a total tri count of, right click and go to properties and itll be about half way down on the right. much easier and doesnt turn your model into tris cause i find that incredibly irritating for some reason
i can see an influence from the P90. looks pretty nice, cept id say the hole behind (for the thumb) should be smaller, if not the same size as the front one. and also, that whole area looks kinda thin and flimsey. it should be a bit more chunky... more like the P90
looks pretty nice but you need to post a wireframe. i can see your main problem is the grill over the barrel... use alpha maps to get pretty much the same effect and then use those polys elsewhere ( bullets and barrel )
as far as skinning goes, you need to unwrap the model. basically, lay out the polygons so theyre flat and can be painted in photoshop or whatever. animating isnt really a problem. i wouldnt go into doin that if youve only just started modelling. for now you can use the defaults or someone elses...
all ive been trying to do is put some shades on mr. terrorist, attatch them to the headbone and then convert it back into CSS. i dont know how to use studiomdl without the visual GUI so that doesnt help. i thought that by not touching the original bone and 'Skin' setup in max would make it easy...
simply put, the polycount of a model should be determined by its importance and the amount of scrutiny it will undergo. player models and weapon models need to be detailed cause that what youre looking at pretty much all of the time. if people are going to glance at this and think 'hey, a...