Lowpoly

Hm, good question! I have modeled years ago real world edifices for the Google Earth 3d Buildings layer, until it was halted in 2013. One of the criteria was to represent the object with as low polygons/geometry as you can. Certainly, model of a car must have lots of polygons but the thing is to reduce them wherever possible - circle has 12 instead of 24/36 sides, thus when extruding it into cylinder or even more into a bent bar it's less complex. Stairs i used to make as one surface with shades on it representing the steps and risers. As for facades, small depressions are also shown just with shades, not with recessed plains. PNG semi-transparent images instead of geometry showing the specific detail, for example a fence. That's my way. I hope it was helpful.

From what I know and from research on the web it seems any mesh with less than 50'000 faces can be considered low poly.

50 000 faces is a lot! You could build 4 or five low poly game sets with that many faces. I know that these days even video games have increased their poly standards because of the more powerful hardware they operate on but still if you plan to make models with high versatility and that can be used on multiple platforms meaning more customers can buy them from you I would stay away from having lots of polys.

Cg trader seems to set the bar at under 50k polys to appropriately list it as a "low-poly" model. However, it depends on the scope of your work. Models meant for use on mobile platforms are relatively high poly at 50k. If your aim is to work on things which ought to appear in a PC or modern console game or some such, 50k is well within acceptable limits for something like a character or vehicle, but might be pushing it when it comes to something innocuous like a wall lamp for example. But as stated above, you can often replace complex geometry with things like bump, normal, light or other forms of mapping and coloring. But you want to avoid faking geometry on the albedo/diffuse textures because at the wrong angles it can look pretty bad. I hope it helps. Oh... i want to point out... I have a free model of a starship, it comes in two variants: one is about 60k polys and the other less than half that. The first has 2048 png textures and the second has them in 512. The first Roflstomps the second one in memory usage, but still gets downloaded more. I find it interesting because they look very similar.

That is really strange maroans_vault lol that the other one gets more downloads. Very interesting situation I learn so much from reading these forums. Thanks for the input :)

Could you please put up the links to the two space ships? I would love to take a look at them.

https://www.cgtrader.com/free-3d-models/space/spacecraft-sci-fi/starship-uss-resonance - Higher poly

https://www.cgtrader.com/free-3d-models/space/spacecraft-sci-fi/starship-uss-resonance-low-poly-variant-1 - Lower Poly

Note though... there is a slight design difference between the two, namely the third engine on the lower poly one, and the angles and such from which it was rendered are also different... I myself thought it was a bit more cool to be able to squish in even more detail on a much lower poly model, but, idk :P

I think it is getting less downloads because of the main picture render. The lower poly one's main render shot is not as cool looking as the higher poly. If you look closely Your high poly has cool stars in the background and the angle at which the ship is shot is far more appealing. I will try sending you a side by side comparison but the key is that on CGT renders matter so much. It is all about perception. If your render is awesome then the actual quality of the model won't matter as much. Your space ships prove my point. You should try messing with the renders and making the low poly one look cooler than the higher poly just for a week to test out my theory but I think you will find that I am correct.

Do you know, I think I will take your advice. Infact, I am going to even go so far as to render the lower poly one in cycles renderer. it will look better. much better, but then become slightly more difficult to put to pipeline :)

Cool! Make sure you give me a heads up when you do I would love to see it :)

Too bad it isnt like facebook where you can just tag people. hehe

So here is the link again with a new updated render. same model and all, just with background and some effects :) tell me what you think. https://www.cgtrader.com/free-3d-models/space/spacecraft-sci-fi/starship-uss-resonance-low-poly-variant-1

According to cgrader low poly could be just about any model. Just do search with low-poly and 250k+ polycount filters applied. Here's some results:
https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/furniture/misc-furniture/curtain-3d-model-157
https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/character-people/clothing/sneakers-1
https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/car/sport/lamborghini-aventador-la-police
And there's many more. Take a note that all those models has special low-poly badge applied, which means that those models are checked and approved by cgtrader staff, AFAIK. Why we need separate low poly models section then, is beyond my understanding.

That's interesting....

Actually, it depends on the project. Some low poly models have 3k to 5k polygon. Some have 20k to 40k polygon but both are considered as a low poly model.

It totally depends on the project, just make sure you optimize your model for low poly as much you can.

Don't delete the necessary polygon.
https://www.cginspiringartist.com/low-poly-modeling/