'Castle Attack' progress - merging files etc.

Last week we decided to merge all of our models so far of the basic shell of the castle in 3ds max, to see if everything is working as planned and fitting together nicely. :) It worked pretty well actually, so we decided to e-mail Simon as he had requested us to in our first week or two of modelling to keep an eye on what we are doing. I still haven't had a reply, but am waiting on it!

Here are some screenshots I got of mine and Amanda's models merged together in one Max file:

I have also just experimented with importing this geometry into the 'Unity' game engine software - to be honest I really don't understand this software, all I can do in it is literally import and view the models. I did it with both an FBX file and OBJ file, which both seemed to work okay, although the FBX file contained materials, but seemed to be very laggy in the viewport.

FBX file imported into Unity

OBJ file imported into Unity

At the weekend, I also had a go at modelling the rather detailed window frames from the East Front wall, discovering that it is very hard to produce the whole object in low poly! For instance, my first attempt was the example below, which only just has less than 1000 faces when counting triangles with the polygon counter (I think this is the tool we need?).

First attempt - too many polys?!

I have now had a second crack at it, editing my previous version, removing edges and vertices along the way, and have now managed a lower poly version amounting at 660 faces using the came method of counting. This is still a lot for 1 window frame, but I guess that they aren't all quite this detailed.