TIPS+TRICKS

TF2 Style Guidelines

Couple of things to keep in mind when building things in the TF world.

Theme

Keeping the visual style consistent is important, in that we don't want anything out of theme or out of date. TF is a stylized world set some time in the 50's. Nothing modern, visually hyper-realistic, or overly "cartoony."
Maintain character personality as much as possible with items. Hats should maintain the character personality of the wearer (heavy ushanka, scout batter's helmet, etc.)

Modeling

TF generally has realistic proportions, only slightly skewed to add visual interest to certain areas.
Details can be slightly overscaled or underscaled, or even removed if unimportant.
Keep things simple and clean, just enough to identify what an object is.

Texturing

Maintain the same texture density of other models in the world (Nothing higher res or lower res than what's next to it.)
For hats, maintain team colors, if not - neutral colors (see color swatch below.)
Character textures are less noisy/detailed than everything else in the game. Character items/hats should match that style.

Technical Info

Keep the polycount similar to what's already in the game. Try to keep hats under 800 polygons, and weapons under 8,000.
Texture sizes should not be larger than 512x512. For hats, 256x256 is usually large enough.