We have just started to add support for effects as economy items and support for them in general on existing items. There are a number of additional things we'd like to add to this basic level of effect customization for items in addition to full blown effect authoring as time goes on. This should ramp up quickly, but…
next steps =] the high poly to get the normal map later, take care to not change much the overall shape, or you will need to change your low poly to fit the high poly on the low poly: smooth the normals that should be smoothed unwrap create the normal map with xnormals or any other program ocllusion bake to help texture…
In that case, it would be better if you created a more complex model for lod0 and remap your uvw's, then remove some of those vertices and create the lod1. You can use the extra vertices in the curved areas, they are really lacking smoothness right now. Just consider which vertices you will be removing along the process so…