I actually agree with you Mike. You have those who say displacement maps are the way to go. Yep, they can look very, very good. But they look better if they themselves are high rez. Put a few of those on your figure and you're taxing your resources like you would if the figure had a higher poly count.

I see the arguments from both sides. There's great importance in a good texture. There's also the same importance in a good mesh. It's a very delicate dance to balance them both ;o). I like denser meshes simply because they look better - the same reason I like a higher resolution texture. But then again, when I do an image, it's not normally of a crowd of people either ;o). There's always gonna be those folks who do images with either crowds or animation where a denser mesh isn't really optimal. Unfortunately, that means two meshes to suit everyone. But as the saying says, you can't please all of the people all of the time. That's where I say you shouldn't try. Do what you wanna do and if others like it, they'll follow ;o).

Laurie