In 3DS Max tutorials, I’ve noticed that many people create multiple objects and intersect them for creating relatively complex models. This is opposed to making a complex model out of a single object, which can be more time-consuming and possibly problematic.
So one object's polys would be inside of another's polys. In a game engine, would these intersecting polys be rendered? If so, would it be prudent to limit the amount of intersecting polys (by moving them as close to each other as possible) in order to save resources and render time? An example is the following from Joao Costa's Modeling for Next Gen Games Tutorial:
[img]http://i39.tinypic.com/qyhgut.jpg[/img]
If you look at the right model, there is a small, circular object near the shoulder and some of its polys go inside of the main hull. Would the inside polys be rendered in a game engine, resulting in a waste of resources? Should the circular object’s faces be deleted where the hull completely envelops them? This is after textures are generated properly from the high poly, of course. Then again, I guess this would mess up UVs…
Perhaps I’m thinking too much? If there were many instances of such models in a game, I think a lot of polys would go to waste.