Minimize your workload is pretty much the only thing you can do. make smart design choises that reduces the amount of production assets. both in art direction, game mechanics and game design.
Totally agree the polycount is perfect for a weapon with that amount of detail. For the SSS, you could try marmoset or UDK, anyway I think you could get away on your glow and difuse. great work!
If your new a modeling my best advice to you is start simple. Do smaller and faster projects. There is nothing more deflating then spending a crazy amount of hours on something and at the end not liking it. Just an fyi
Eh, I'd disagree. I'd just avoid them entirely. The amount of issues they can (and do) cause really isn't worth the few seconds it takes to just split 'em up into quads and tris.
No problem seems like the eyeball is modeled correctly then. It could be the lighting but I feel like it should react properly to any kind of lighting. Maybe the gloss amount could be increased to get a sharper highlight?
I think I am done! Here it is inside UDK. The past two weeks have been rough but it feels good to accomplish something in the amount of time that I did, with the look I got. ^_^
Thanks Elliot. I think I did go a bit over board with the amount of bricks, but I spent more time on it trying to bring the quality up: I'm currently working on this ground texture:
There was a bug in the autodesk exporter, where tris of meshes with multiple materials where multiplied by that amount. This was fixed with the FBX plugin 2013.2. There is also an update for the OpenCollada plugin for Maya 2013, but it crashes here. Hope this helps
I worked on the skin material some more. I created the transmission map which controls the amount of light that goes through the back of the skin, such as the nose and ears, and also the veins that appear when lit.