so what you meant by asking for references and models is like the vehicle content that people have created to use in RO? like the after hourz vehicles, DH/MN/CC vehicles etc....?
if so, a quick search in the ROOST forums pulled up this wip for the M3 grant:
[url]http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?t=11448[/URL]
Waaaaaay too low poly for the applications here, I suspect.
When you plan on doing real time rendering of something, like in a game, then you want low pollies. When you are doing something in print, or for broadcast, or anything where you've got pre-rendered segments, basically, then you don't have to worry so much about your polygon budget, except insofar as you're limited by how much money you're willing to spend for render farm time, or for artists to make the thing for you.
That right there was about 5,000 polygons. Something like this, where you're looking for museum-quality duplication of something and not worried about render time or art budgets (since it's volunteer work after all) ... I'm expecting my tank to be in the neighborhood of a 1,500,000 polygons or so, so long as it's not intended for realtime rendering. Maybe 2 million, even. Tracks are complex.