modularity for architecture

war2die4

Hi im new here and fairly new to udk and have a few questions about modularity.
Im gonna start modeling houses and apartments and was wondering if it would be better to model the rooms in one piece and then put them together in udk or model just a few floor and wall pieces and tile them together.
As far as polycount goes and instancing that is.

Just copy pasted question from my op.

thanks for any help on the matter.

Visceral

Floor and wall peices. http://3dmotive.com/product-modular-building-udk

fearian

It depends on what your making - are you just doing interiors or just exteriors? there's no one right way to do it, but it largely depends on what you are making.

In general though, model out a small part or example of your scene in your 3d app, making sure to model to a grid and keeping in mind how you plan to break it up. then export the individual pieces one by one and put them together like lego!

war2die4

Im sorry I should have been more clear about that, I plan to model the interior, I want to be able to walk around the buildings.

But for example if I were to model just the wall and floor pieces and fit them together inside the udk and use material instancing to change it up for different textures, would that impact my polly count greatly if I were to reuse those pieces several times over.

Im not quite sure how the instancing of static meshes work precisely, if you need me to clarify anything just let me know.
thanks in advance.

sprunghunt

war2die4 wrote: »

But for example if I were to model just the wall and floor pieces and fit them together inside the udk and use material instancing to change it up for different textures, would that impact my polly count greatly if I were to reuse those pieces several times over.

There are two kinds of polycount. There's memory and performance. If you instance an object it usually saves memory - but it doesn't necessarily improve performance. It's a complicated issue because there's all kinds of factors that can affect this.

I've said it before but you should have a look at the levels which come with UDK and look at the way they're built.

war2die4

Thank you for your response, I have looked at the levels and the thing is im trying to model a modern city of houses and what not and none of the levels or assets that come with udk are any thing like that, so I couldnt get a good idea on how to model those things.

So perhaps I will just model a few rooms and wall and floor pieces, or is there a better way I should do this, how would some of you model things like that.

Im just looking for some ideas on this.
Thank for any help you could give me.