Thanks everyone for the comments. Renders at this point with full antialiasing at 1920x1080 HD resolution (17 passes in LW Layout, and radiosity turned on) takes 3 min and 3 sec. I spent the last 3 days poly trimming as Titon suggested and now practice reasonably high poly modelling on the big G. I used to just shrink down the little nurnies from the big versions to make details on a big mesh, but now I poly reduce it first for a small version. This has saved me over 4 million polys so far on the engine section alone! The total number is 9.8 million so far.
I anticipate at this rate in staying below my 20 million goal before completion. Like I said, only 1/2 the mesh needs to be loaded at a time for one-sided render passes, so only 10 million polys will need to be loaded and rendered in most cases.
Fitting the parts had me scratching my head for days! Did I make a mistake in measuring the basic hull? My main reference was noticing that 4 basic greebles make up most of the engine detail. So I started with the 1st one, and using that as a "ruler" for determining the basic shape and proportion of the engine section. The 1st greeble then had to fit on the next location without resizing, so the basic engine hull was resized until it fit the part.
For example, here is a section of the engine hull which I didn't notice until I tried to fit the 1st big greeble above it. I did not model in this angle initially, so the thickness of the side was too narrow to fit the next greeble without re-sizing it (which is a big no-no!)
And here is the corrected mesh with all the part now fitting, much to my relief!
I then made the 2nd greeble, and put it next to the 1st and cloned the sequence 4 times, and that was how I arrived at the overall length of the engine section. I find that my method was so accurate, that no resizing of the midsection and front section was needed, and looking at the reference pics, the battlestar looks good to my "eye". I wouldn't dare measure it though! I'm just going to pretend that everything is good and NEVER do this again!
