low poly or highpoly?

[kishou]

hey for a pc game is it better to go low poly and use smoothing groups? or go low poly and use normals or go highpoly. also could you say which things in a video game you should go highpoly for and low poly for. thanks.

[fabiodan]

high poly models are only used for pre-rendered sequences (IE intro movies), or to generate the normal map for a low-poly model.
In a game all models are low-poly, because they are only in it if they're low-poly, the hi-poly models are made only to create the normal maps
so the best option is low-poly+normal maps for most the game.