Excellent work there morphine, i have a golden tip for skinning for you:

When the skin is finishd:

In PS:

Go to > filter > sharpen > sharpen
You can do this once or twice to your liking.

Then go to > Image > adjustment > Brightness contrast

Change the contrast slider first, if its to light or dark then you can change it with the lightning slider next to it. This makes your skin looks way more crispy and detailed.

Your doing just fine there morphine, as long as you remember that there always is something to improve or a new modeling technique to learn.

Really like your bat there, did you shade in shadows and lighting? Try using D&B for that(Dodge'n Burn). Great way of adding lightning.

I know quite the bit about skinning, this is my latest work for a HL mod:

http://hostagesituation.mypunbb.com/viewtopic.php?id=31

I also had quite a lot of trouble creating textures, down in the end i was abusing cloud and noise filter in PS. Now you might say, how the hell did he learned it? By tutorials, yes there out there and there plenty of them.

But, up to a while ago it was a certain thing about skinning that you need to understand, i still cant put my finger on it but i definately changed something in my mind that helped me understanding the texture.

Enough blattering from me, check this link out:

http://www.sourceblog.org/

Nowadays you need to sign up to see the tutorial database but its worth it. The forums arent to crowded but those people really know what there talking about.

Good luck, and if you need a hand feel free to contact me, helping doesnt hurt anyone.

Dodge and Burn are tools with wich you can (respectively) lighten or darken a area. Thus used to create a base skin, then small details painted in by changing the lighting.

I personaly think one needs the extra push to get started with skinning, it was quite hard for me when i started until i realized what i was doing wrong/wright. Then you know what you can improve on.

Besides that, its also a good practice for making textures.

And good luck!

All depends on the type of prop, the amount of detail and how much it is going to be seen. Also note that moving polygons(PHys) are heavier to render for the engine.

Not quite sure about max7, there used to be a SMD exporter, you might want to run a google on this.