Looks good, but are you sure you aren't counting polygons instead of triangles? It looks more like 8000 triangles and 4075 polygons. Make sure you're counting triangles since they are not the same as polygons. Keep up the good work it looks great!
It depends. It always depends. http://www.rsart.co.uk/2006/11/20/how-many-polygons-in-a-piece-of-string/ http://www.rsart.co.uk/2007/08/27/yes-but-how-many-polygons/ http://wiki.polycount.com/PolygonCount?action=show&redirect=Polygon+Count#Typical_Triangle_Counts
Your polygons are not planar - Shell modifier converts the model to editable mesh instead of editable poly, which shows faceting on non-planar polygons. You can hit "make planar" in editable poly or assign smoothing groups to the polygons to avoid this happening.
I think you understood right. By skinning I meant weighting a polygon mesh to a skeleton for the purposes of posing/animation. By using cards for feathers, I meant using the same technique as for polygon hair.
Hello Poly counters , I am a 3D modeler , i have always worked with polygons , but lately i started working with Unreal Engine and i Have order a task with many conditions . one of them is that " all the Tris . of the model shouldn't exceed 10,000 " does UE 4 convert polygons to Tris. automatically ? or what should i do ?