question : modular pieces or whole building?

Ryandec

I have a quick question about creating buildings, I'm planning on creating a house with full interior along with assets to popular it etc, my question is what is the best way or most efficient way to create to main bulk of the structure? should I be modelling the walls together and attached or doing it modular? like should I have windows as a piece on its own with its own UVs or connect it to the house? this is going to be a portfolio piece for my final university project so I want to get it right, Iv'e done plenty of research into creating modular assets but I'm still confused around what is the best for building structures especially since I'm only having one building and not tons of variations or anything.

thanks and would appreciate any insight into this!

Axi5

What engine are you using? Most of them offer multi-materials so making a section of wall with a window included shouldn't be an issue. Saves messing around with many meshes (like my current project which has even the window frames separated from the glass, it's just an all round headache that I'm going to revisit and improve).

I'd go modular even if you're only doing one building because you can iterate it, so you have a lot more creative freedom. The other big plus is that you get a lot of texel space for every piece, so you won't be importing 4K-8K maps for one model, efficiency is obviously depending on how well you use many smaller maps compared to single large ones though.

I set up my building in Unreal 4 with a colour mask and material collection. This way I can target specific areas of all of my meshes globally i.e. The awning colour looks a bit off tweak that, all modular assets change simultaneously.

It's a very fun way to work to watch all your assets update like that.

Geometry wise, get used to working on a grid for modular assets. As long as your main shapes line up you should be golden.

My advice: Modular > 1 piece.

edit: seems I'm jumping the gun on game engine thing, I assumed, I still think modular is best in most situations though.

Eric Chadwick

Good advice above.

This might help you visualize how to break your building down into modular pieces.
Visually Appealing Building Guide

UE4 Modular Building Set Breakdown is another great resource.

More goodies
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Modular_environments

Ryandec

Thanks for the advice and sources guys, I had a feeling modular might have been the way to go. I definitely don't wanna be using 4k maps or higher, I think i'm right in saying they don't use these in the industry practice, well at least for buildings? thanks again for the help and I'll most likely have posts in the future of progress of my project or when its finished not sure yet!

Axi5

Eric Chadwick wrote: »

Good advice above.

This might help you visualize how to break your building down into modular pieces.
Visually Appealing Building Guide

UE4 Modular Building Set Breakdown is another great resource.

More goodies
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Modular_environments

I was looking for that first link to post here and just because it's so helpful. Cheers

Eric Chadwick

Ha, yeah me too. It's on that page in the third link!