I'm not using maya, so I don't know what "combining" exactly means there. But, Those little planes should be subobjects (element in Max) of the roof mesh. So its probably the "part of the mesh" thing. I hope this helps.
I'm loving the colors and proportions. You composition changes were also nice, but you covered her hands, an important element for you to work with. Her arms add rhythm to the scene. I'm eager to see more! Following ;P
heh. we got that in common, athough... i`m only 3rd year :) i`m really curious how the icicle will turn out. Tiny really needs a new earth/elemental-based aghanim if you ask me
Frantically trying to get more elements into this, I still need to place more items around and get some lens effects in but for now I was able to do haze, fog, water, grime, damage and the whole scene so far
Started the texture on the path area. Still have to make some rocks for around there, texture the crates/small prop on the side, and possibly add in background elements like a forest or castle (something off in the distance on the left side and right side.
All five elements without armor sets. Redid the hands as a I decided that they need to be able to at least open a mitten. Not sure how I'm going to texture them as I have no tablet currently. So just modeling for now.
I keep a library of hipoly model elements like screws and hinges around for exactly this reason. It's just not worth faking things if you're doing any kind of mechanical model. Ideally your highpoly would be as detailed as a real fridge.
Finally finished with the lowpoly + normal + AO. :) ~8000 triangles What do you think as an appropriate triangle count for an object like this? I thought 5-10K is acceptable as this is a more prominent part of the visual, not just a random background element. :)
As has been said, your poly distribution needs a lot of work. The smaller elements can be removed entirely and your small cylinders have the same detail as the big ones. The clockface really suffers from being too jagged
So having moved onto texturing, I have begun a preliminary pass on the gun having followed some substance tutorials and trying to keep as much of the texturing as possible procedural. There will be certain elements that I will need to texture using photoshop.