About PhilipK's modular tecnique

armagon

I was reading about the modular asset technique used by Philip Klevestav on his article at Vertex 2 and i ended up with a few questions about it. Maybe some of you, with more experience, can help me sort it out!

• The screenshots show walls with at least 2 units of thickness. Is this important so you can create a bevel at the borders? Should all walls be like this, or i can get away with a simple plane and a normal at the top and bottom?
• What's the most popular unit conversion rate? 1 cm = 1 game unit? And do you guys keep your modular assets sized at power of 2? I mean: 32, 64, 128, 256, etc, for segments.
  

m4dcow

For the wall thickness I don't think it is super important, but if you are making an actual level set for a game and not a room as portfolio piece, you would want something with thickness. That whole vertex article is about keeping things standard, so figure out your base units and stick with them.

I know in the default UE4 content it is intended that 1 UU = 1 cm. The scales can vary from engine to engine, but it doesn't really matter. I am personally used to the power of 2 scale but now UE4's grid defaults to decimal grid and I think Unity's does also but just keep whatever system works best for you.

armagon

Even for interiors? Because, since it's modular, i was assuming that by doing a simple plane, or a subtly detailed plane, i could use the shapes to create buildings. I mean: a plane using material X for the exterior and another one for the interior, with 5 units separating them, simulating thickness. This way, the level designer can have any thickness he wants.

Regarding units, i was asking in order to know what's the best ratio. I've seen some engines using 1 meter = 1 unit, but that sounds very difficult to work with. Since there's no standard, i'll keep with cm.

Thanks for the tips!

m4dcow

So you as an artist shouldn't have a problem doing single sided pieces, but that leaves a whole bunch of extra pieces for the designers to deal with not to mention there being extra draw calls. Also leaving too much flexibility could totally fuck your grid system, would you do multiple thickness doorways? Do you really break those up into a front a back and middle modular piece? That's more pieces to screw up. Try to think about having decent enough sized chunks so someone could block out a level quick and painlessly with large enough grid steps. You also have to think about how granular you want to be, you mention building exteriors... But how detailed... Building a modular set for a city would be a whole lot less granular than a single building, even on single building you can do whole floors or even high rise as a single piece.

Like I say I prefer the power of 2 grid because you can keep breaking things down in half before everything turns into a mush of decimals (.25 .125 .0625 etc..) This also ends up lining up well with textures. No matter the grid system, you have to think of them in terms of real units in the end, so whether 64 units=1ft or 100 units=1m, so do whatever the project standard is or whatever you're comfortable with.