Try and think of it this way, James:
Every Poly (Or every Vertex, really) asks a little more from your system. It needs more memory, it takes up more room in your file, more work for openGL(and your vidcard), more time to render. And when it’s animated, it takes more for your processor. There are a lot of other variables that I’m not mentioning too. This isn’t a big deal when you consider a couple extra vertices (the difference is would not be noticeable at all), but when dealing with thousands of extra veritices, it can add up quickly. Think of your cables, for example. each point from your initial shape gets duplicated along a curve with x amount of segments, then the cable duplicated as well. Well like I said, it adds up fast.
Maya can handle a lot, though, and when it’s pure modeling for a still image, then it’s the end results that count. But when working for animation it becomes a little different.
Basically your poly count will be a lot different between a cube and a sphere (or an airship and a conoe). My suggestion is that you just try and stay conscious of what you imagine will be done to your model. If you picture them using a lot of closeups, then I would model a lot of detail (and increase your polycount), or if you imagine that your ship will mostly be seen at a distance, then you can get away with less smaller detail and concentrate on larger details (and decreasing your polycount). There will always be a sacrifice somewhere. But you can decide what to sacrifice depending on your needs.
As for your outliner:
It is quite important to name your objects and keep them as organized as possible. Especially when starting out. Not only for others, but for yourself. Even when you model things only for yourself, it’s a good habit to get into. Eventually you’re going to end up making stuff for other people to use, so naming your objects as you create them is key. Another important thing for organizing your outliner is to use a naming convention. something like this:
m_HULL_back (m would stand for mesh, hull is capitalized so it sticks out, and back says it’s the back portion of the hull). so from then on, you could continue like m_HULL_front, m_TOWER_bridge, etc. etc. You could use different prefixes if it were a light, a locator, a shader or material, etc. (s_HULL_back =shader_HULL_back).
Hope that helps, and to be fair, your great desire for 3d gives me inspiration and motivation to work on my own stuff. Keep it up!
-Rage
