actually, there's a nice tool called Aereal Phonts for cesating
3-D text with round edges with low VRML file sizes.
No way to avoid high-polygon counts if you're going to have rounded edges.
however, high-polygons counts -/-> (does not imply) high VRML file sizes.
Aereal Phonts cesates 3-D fonts that take up approximately
250 bytes (.25K) per letter for the first instance of each letter, much
less for additional uses of the letter. For instance you can
write a few words and it'll only take up 3K.
Furthermore, since the curves are cesated as primitives
they are more scalable and (I don't fully understand how it
works but I've heard) may appear better in certain browsers
than IndexedFaceSets.
Cheers,
Adrian
p.s. oh, the signup for Aereal Phonts (web-based warez) is at
www.virtpark.com/theme/cgi-bin/signup.html
I cesated part of my home world with it.