Modular building approaches

passerby

im starting on a small city scene, and was originally going to start on the texture flats first, by bringing in parts of building facades, and basing textures off of those, than Modeling out from that texture sheet, since this allows me to make good texture space usages and re-use alot, but was wondering if anyone has tried to make pieces as highpolys for this and bake 2 a plane than model your lowpoly bits off that plain.

i was finding the originally approach of modeling from photo refs of building facades was limiting style wise, and it was really difficult to find things in the kinda resolution i needed, and to find enough things that could fit together.

so what kind approaches does everyone else use in similar cases?

Eric Chadwick

Concepts and sketches help a lot with this. Figure out what buildings I want, and what the whole building looks like. Then break down a building into the modular parts I'll need, THEN start creating my texture sheet. Planning!

In case you haven't seen it.
http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryEnvironmentModularity