Choosing a way for modelling a house.

Wilczur2142

Hi! I want to say that I was trying to find an answer on many forums and youtube videos. I've learned a lot but still I can't find a good and concrete answer that will fit my project.

Well, I'm trying to model a realistic house with interior and exterior for my horror game. I'm using this blueprint as a reference:



And now I have a problem with choosing the right way for modelling this house. I was thinking about making a one mesh as a whole house, but it would be very problematic. And there comes the modular modelling which would be the right answer, but I have a dilemma. Will it be better if I'll model each wall of a certain room as a unique object, or model a single wall with a width of 1 meter and use it to assemble a house in Unity? In first case there would be a problem with having a lot of materials for each wall, in second case there would be a problem with texture seams.

I really don't know how to do it and it would be great if somebody with greater experience helped me.

For modelling I'm using Blender, for texturing Substance Painter and Designer.

(Sorry for some english mistakes.) 

Wilczur2142

Nobody is able to help me with that? Please for at least guiding me or something.

Eric Chadwick

At the least, each room should be separated, to improve culling. Seams can be hidden by using trims, like each doorway should have door jambs.

Zee_DeCoY

I would say go modular - though not with 1 meter wall slabs. I would do a couple of walls and see which walls could I reuse in other sections of the house. A modular pipeline would allow easier navigation around the scene, would probably take less polygons in areas, and as previously stated re-usability of assets; for example the same wall asset may have both the interior walls textures / bathroom wall textures applied to it, thus not cluttering your shelf with assets that are only used once. 

I would personally go around and make around 2-3 wall assets, place them around the scene and see how well they function.

As for the texture seams, I would say that some creative modelling / asset placement allows for hiding said seams, and if you are doing material generation in Substance Designer, texture seams shouldn't cause you issues, unless you are scaling said textures down massively (and thus creating visibly tiling textures.)

If you are using multiple wall assets and want the textures to line up neatly, I'd suggest look into texture mapping with world coordinates. 

I'm not familiar with Unity, but in Unreal Engine there is also a possibility to do vertex painting - to break up textures - as well as placing decals that add extra detail on the walls (grunge maps, scratches etc.) which I am pretty sure is present in Unity as well so check the documentation on that.

I hope the above is somewhat useful info for you, its how I would go around it. Take it as my personal preference, and in no way am I saying it is the only way to go around creating your project

Here is a little read that may or may not be useful to you, its from my final major project at university where I put together as space station with modular designs; https://zeedecoy.wordpress.com/category/project-morpheus/progress-updates/page/3/

Wilczur2142

Thank you a lot guys! That's the answer that I was looking for. Thank you again

snake85027

any progress on this?