Working on a Hellboy Sack Boy (from Little Big Planet) in Blender for a low-poly comp over at gameartisans.com . Already have a lot of it blocked out, but I will probably need some help with aspects like normal map production etc. So I’m setting up a W.I.P. here too. Here is my reference sheet.
First question. How can I get a triangle count of one mesh or an entire scene in Blender?
Hey lowpoly Blender…will be following your progress!..To get the tri count is easy…if you in object mode you can see the face count in your top menu bar…so if you then go into edit mode…sellect all faces and press ctrl-T it will convert your mesh into Tri’s…go into object mode and the faces it then shows in the top menu bar will be Tri’s…unfortunately you have to do this for every object if your scene consists of many objects…I often just Cntrl-J( join all meshes) and then in edit mode Ctrl-T all together and then in object view get the count…I usually save my work just before I do this and then just restore my old file after I got the count!..Do not save after you have done this or you will be left with models consisting of tri’s…happened to me…I know you can turn Tri’s to quads again but you dont get your old topology back!!!
If there is a better way I would also love to hear about it!
Hope that helps!
Cheers
Is this for the Blender Game Engine?
Yeah I know mate. Tri’s are different to faces.
Thanks Shakedown, I will use that approach. Not too much hassle really. Easy enough to check I’m under 2000 every so often 
Plantperson- It is being modelled, unwrapped in Blender, have its normals generated in Blender, and it will be ‘rendered’ through the BGE too. Might even do some beauty shots with Yafray. So yeah 
martinsh is probably too classy to say this but “Not ALL the time”
ahh yes that is same technique as shakedown uses… kinda left out (Ctrl+t) thing, i thought you need only the place the info is shown 
lol I think I need to set some different smoothing groups on the high-poly! How do I go about this? (Low-poly Samaritan is 400 tris BTW)
Hey!
If what you are asking is to have some areas smooth and others not…that is easy…in editmode sellect the faces you want smoothed and hit the setsmooth button…alternativelyhit the set solid button on faces that you want no smoothing on!..
If you however are working on a subsurf and you want to changwe the crease angle you can sellect the part in edit mode…hit Shift-T and move your mouse till you get the right angle!!
Hope it helps…BTW if you having some problems with baking normals with Blender …just shout…think I might be able to help!
Hmmm not exactly what I need regarding smoothing groups, but I guess it will have to do. Surprised there are no smooth group tools in Blender. I don’t want to subdivide the High Poly, I’d like to just bake its normal/occlusion onto the low-poly straight.
And thanks for the offer, no doubt I will be taking you up on it! 
You can use EdgeSplit modifier. Here see how it works:
select the edges you want to be sharp and hit CNTRL-E / mark sharp
then apply an edge split modifer to the object
Cheers Martin and jpblur! That sounds perfect. I’ll use that tool.
Or just select the faces you want smooth, P > Selected, then select the split faces, edit mode, w > set smooth, and then CTRL + J join the meshes back together. That’s my way of working, hope you understand it
So you detach the individual parts of your mesh? Wouldn’t it just be easier to use the edge split modifier?
Last time I tried the edge split modifier doesn’t work in game.
it works for me pretty well.
Of course, you have to apply it before playing game.
Guess I just do it a weird way
It’s OK Andrew, it’s only going to go as far as a 3D model for my portfolio, I won’t be making a game out of it
A few days ago I saw a great normal map tut. It was just a bunch of images, but basically the guy sculpted on a Suzanne model, then produced a normal map and applied it to the base. I can’t for the life of me remember which forum I saw it on! 
Anyone know the one I am talking about?
The link is up at blendernation!