So what is the difference between modeling scenes, and making models for games? besides having to make it a more low res model? anything i need to know?
Look up Fake AO, Normal Mapping. Think about lighting, max lamps 8 per scene.
Use lower res textures.
And that’s all that needs to be different? no special exports?
not really different, it kinda depends what games you are modelling for. some games don’t like normal maps.
The export format will depend on the game engine you are using.
If you are looking to export models for xna framework then it will only accept .fb and .fbx (not certain about the first one, something like that)
The second one is the one you would export to seeing as that what Blender supports. But .obj is usually a widely accepted format.
Some other little tricks to reduce poly counts is use triangles (well this will actually cut down on vertices used, but triangles obviously dont subsurf well)
Objects that are farther away could be achieved with just one textured plane which would be programmed to face towards the camera where ever it moves. This way a flat plane with a tree image texture will appear round without chewing up resources. Then when the player gets closer the programmer would tell it to switch over higher poly mesh. This part may take some tweaking so its not obvious to the player that the model just changed.
To view some sample meshes of game ready models I would suggest viewing game models for sale (like on turbosquid for example) Usually the artist will give lots of images showing off the wire mesh.