[GD-Consoles] Textures vs. Polygons

[R & D \(GameBrains\) <res...@ga...>]

List has been quiet of late and I have a semi-OT question....

Technology has come far enough in close-up character rendering that the =
skins for characters seem to take up too much precious space for the =
quality they show on screen and I was wondering if there are solutions =
around this.  For example, when you see a character up close that has =
been skinned, even with a hi-res texture you can see pixelation around =
the places like the neck etc. and the pixel filtering makes it look =
really not natural when compared to the individually textured =
environments in the background.  The "easy" solution is to not use =
skins, but to individually texture each part of the character, but then =
the subtle detail of clothing seams and shadows is gone.  To get around =
this we could use shadow maps, decaled textures, vertex coloring, etc.

1.  How have others solved this problem, especially on consoles such as =
the PS2 where texture cache is limited?
2.  For those using skins, what has been a good resolution for the skin =
for consoles?  For PC?
3.  Can multi-texturing and other solutions actually solve this problem?

Any advice that those have to offer would be welcome:)  Most of our =
previous games have used rigid body objects rather than organic =
characters, so we are new to the problems that are likely old-hat to =
everyone else...

Thanks!
Brett