Here is a quick Scene i built in UDK the poly count for the whole project is 23K quads. Used 4X1024 and 2x512. (everything in the scene is mine excluding the skydome.) juannuno3d.com
I'm not sure how much this tut would contribute, but I've played around with it a couple of times and liked it: http://www.ryankingslien.com/?p=203. Hopefully it helps.
been using maya for 5+ months now and still learning, here's one of my latest work, http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/263/vorpal1.png/ Uploaded with ImageShack.us