The preview mode also has tons more polygons - it just doesn't display them. You don't have to smooth it though, cause MR renders the preview mode anyway;

otherwise smooth, or do proxy subdivision and play with the settings, but you'll always end up with more polygons because everything is made of straight lines, so the curve you see is basically a set of many straight lines at various angles.

Originally Posted by nov2011

I'd just keep it all one piece. If you want to lower poly-count you might wanna use less divisions on the cylinders. If you plan to use the proxy subdivision or smooth it later it will add divisions anyway.

I don't know how to optimize it for game engines, but for now.. I'd just focus on one thing: the visual appeal of the model instead of limitations of game engines.. there's A LOT to learn in just hard surface modelling itself. I imagine other areas of 3D are also quite vast.

Originally Posted by nov2011

It would be pretty hard to sculpt (and texture) it as one piece, usually you just sculpt the pieces separately, then you can merge polygons to make it into one piece. As I said I don't know anything about optimizing or modelling for different game engines - so someone else will give you a better answer, but from what I hear you might wanna do some research and set your scene up in specific way (e.g.: for unreal, the grid units have to match unreal editor grid units) and so on.. but if you want to do a "room with as good as possible looking interior" then you can just animate camera flying through in Maya and then render it with all the fancy reflection, shadows and lightning of Maya.

Originally Posted by nov2011