Jennifer, keeping in mind that in Uru or any similar 3D real time game the rendering speed is first and foremost, can it be tell that roughly how many vertices/faces should be used at most? I know of course, that it depends on many factors, but a guess only? For example, when I create a cube with a broken side (by applying the mesh tools/fractals several times) the more divisions are used the better looking the result. Where is a feasible limit?
Like you said, it really does depend on many factors...there are all sorts of coding methods and tricks that you can play to keep your graphical quality while still staying lag-free that all depend on just what your needs are in a particular situation, plus the game's performance is dependent upon individual computer speed, so it's hard to give one single rule.
But in terms of designing your models to be graphically efficient, the following excerpt from this website (http://www.digitalproducer.com/pages/soft_3d_p1.htm) might be helpful (emphasis mine):
In game development, the programmers who build the code engine typically perform tests to determine exactly how many polygons the engine can draw per second, on a reference machine that the game players are likely to have. Then the game designer sets the frame rate at which the game must refresh for smooth action, and the total engine performance number is divided by that frame rate to deliver the polygon budget. The Polygon budget is how many polygons can be on screen in each frame, before the game engine begins to choke and can’t draw them all in time. After the polygon budget has been determined, the game designers list all the elements that need to be onscreen at one time, and divide the polygon budget up into a budget for each element.
For example, if my game engine can draw 90,000 lit, textured triangles per second, and I want the game to play at 30 frames per second, the polygon budget is 3000 triangles per each frame. If I assign 1000 triangles to the terrain, 200 to the backdrop, and decide that five enemies can be onscreen at once, each with 200 triangles for the enemy and 100 triangles for weapons, shots, and so on, that leaves me with 300 triangles for the main character.
Modeling an attractive, convincing main character in less than 300 triangles isn't easy...
...For those of you interested in video game technology, there is usually a texture budget as well. A typical game engine can draw a polygon without a texture in about 10% of the processor cycles required for the same polygon with a texture, so reducing texture usage can help performance. Also, as the textures get larger, the time required to map them onto polygons and the memory used to store them increases.
I guess now what we need to know to calculate our polygon budget per frame is:
1. How many frames a second does Uru's engine, Plasma, run?
2. How many lit, textured triangles per second can Plasma draw?
I will query our programmers to seek the answer to these questions.
And of course, the simple solution is to test your scenes out in Uru for lag. Except of course if you have a fast computer, and then the lovely graphics that don't give your computer lag might still give slower computers lag. /shrug It's a balance!
That's a very good key and lock! It's amazing how far you can get with just a simple tool like boolean, isn't it? Well, welcome to the class. 
) The gears are not very nice. When I did the first one I got bored with adding all those cubes so I just attached them and they are a bit scewed. So I made another one but I didn't really put my heart into that one either (and I totally forgot to use ctrl when I rotated the cubes... 
)
On the other hand that gave me the opportunity to "try" what Owehn made. 
