Your method sounds fine to me, if I understood it correctly. Just remember that sabers are small, so they don't require a whole lot of detail mesh-wise. My rule is: the smaller the object, the less tris you need while larger objects could use more tris. I'm pretty sure sabers can have LODs, so: LOD0 (original mesh) = 1,000 tris LOD1 = 500 tris LOD2 = 250 tris Numbers don't have to be spot-on, but around these values.