Modeling info/tutorials

Hopefully you'll all understand this stuff better than i can and enlighten me on it.
Just a few tutorials that have info on conventions we'll need to follow for models in game, doesn't mean much to me at the mo but GO TEAM!

http://www.iddevnet.com/quake4/ArtReference_CreatingModels
- An art reference tutorial, kind of start to finish for modeling for Quake 4 type thing.

http://www.iddevnet.com/quake4/Animations
- Animation guide.

Poly Counts, rough guide based on models in game...
* 1st Person Weapon Total: 2000 - 2800
o Both Arms: 1300
o Weapon (Faces not visible deleted): 700 - 1500
* 3rd Person Player Total: 2500
o Player Body(Without Gun or Head): 1500
o Player Head: 600
o Player Head_up (high LOD model?): 800
o Player World Weapon: 200-400

That link is useful. Some of the stuff is irrelevant for this project but I urge everyone to at least give it a read.

Just a further note about models and the only thing i could find about skeleton hierarchy. (something i needed to find out)

Model Setup

* Your model must be comprised of triangles. This can be accomplished by selecting the whole of your model and clicking Polygons > Triangulate.

* Your model must have an origin bone, preferably located at the model's base for ground based actors. Your model's skeletal hierarchy must be parented to the origin bone. In other words, the origin bone must be the root bone in your hierarchy. This bone must be created and linked in your skeletal hierarchy prior to binding the skeleton to the model.

* You must ensure all discontinuous meshes are parented.

* Your model must be UV mapped.

* Your model must be assigned a lambert material via the Hypershade window. This material's filter type must be Quadratic and it must derive it's diffuse or color texture from an image map.

* You must triangulate the mesh, freeze transformations, delete the history, and bind the skeleton to the model in that order.

* You must save your model in .mb (Maya Binary) format.

Thanks

That's just the sort of thing we need to know.
And I when I say 'need to know', I also mean we need to learn how to lol