I usually have a scene with everything in place, perhaps doing a render with textures and effects off, then I figure the amount of polygons for each group then delete what I don't want and save, But remember to keep the scene with everything for reference. When I've got everything as I want it in each segment I merge it all together and render, this can take ages BTW. Another thing I do is plop render. I'll have the basic scene set up and render, then add the new pieces and do a plop saving each one then it's a cut and paste job in Photoshop. Catlin