High size models though they might look great for animation, videos or pictures, for game especially for web games often you want a very low poly count to maximize the game performance. In the free models often the the artist is more hurry in finishing is work then making in toned for game purposes. So is one of those things that one most learn in order to use free models. I think is like a JPG you can lower your resolution just until the image is losing quality that become visible enough.
Though polygons may be a burden in terms of efficiency some time textures are also not rendered enough to achieve high results. They come in large sizes like 12 mb for a texture, which if you want a high resolution is something great. A game that have 100 mb can become a 1GB game size. Not only processing of the game it self is slow was it bandwidth download becomes bigger, storage, etc and so on...
Poly Count Reduction
How to reduce polygon count in your 3D models. Free models often come with a very high size, which translates in many polygons.
Posted by jdc01 on - Basic Props Modelling
