Need Zt1 style modding advice.

[ThyCheshireCat]

Not sure if this is the right place to ask but I've seen other people use this to ask for ZT1 mod design help before so I'm assuming it is? Sorry if it's the wrong part of the forums.

Does anyone here know or at least have an idea of the ideal polycount for a model to really fit in Zt1 to the point of looking official? I'm looking to get into making my own Zt1 mods but I'm very much a stickler for design consistency so I'd ideally like to know what other people who make custom ZT1 styled models tend to use for their animal polycounts so I can get an ideal looking mod.
Would also like to know what a good Zt1 style dimension for textures is, just to get even more accuracy with what I'd be creating.
I know (or at least think) Rapan didn't release any of their models so it might be tough to answer this but I've seen designers make pretty good Zt1 styled mods, which shows it's definitely possible to make them look accurate.

Thanks in advance!

[Goosifer]

I don't think the polycount matters too much to get a ZT1 style. You'll notice that their models in pre-rendered images tend to have a lot of smoothing to give them a sort of playdough look to them with the stretchy limbs and stylized faces. In a Blender context you'd get a similar effect by creating a super low poly model, give it a couple subdivisions with the modifier, and polish it up with some light sculpting.  The elephant is the best example:

 

 

On Blender you can texture paint with simple colors and shapes without needing to get too crazy. You'll notice that the final render blends your colors together anyway since the resolution is so small. Since we're so zoomed out, you can also get away with giving the animals dots for eyes unless you want the plaque to look high res. The hotdog and fennec fox models I made used a 240x240 dimension for the texture.

 

Those are my observations as a beginner anyway, so not sure my tips carry much weight with my two models so far :P