Modular building destruction

tehfailsafe

I'm very much a beginner so forgive the ignorance that may follow...
I just started learning about modular design and love the concept. Build the bits you need and reuse and reconfigure to make all sorts of new things.

But my current personal project i want to do a destroyed city building, something with beams sticking out and exploded sections here and there. But I'm trying to understand how one would do this using modular pieces? I would have to have a signifigantly large number of pieces built to not be very obvious with the destruction since the broken bits will be organic shapes and thus very recognizable when repeated.

So is it worth following a modular method here or just building out the broken bits as I would a unique mesh?

Here's a concept similar to what I'm shooting for.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4037263/destroyed_the_city_Wallpaper_kj5hr.jpg

tyddynroger

im pretty new to modular building aswell, but that building looks pretty straight forward to be made from modualr pieces, just create different damaged modular pieces and undamaged modular peices that slot together.

tehfailsafe

Hm, maybe I'm just thinking about my modular pieces too small. I was planning on making the modules for the walls 2 windows by 2 windows, but that big exploded section would need a good 8x4 section.

Im not trying to stay 100% to the concept, but at 2x2 window sections I'll need quite a large number of modules to build up the building without super obvious repetition of the destroyed bits, which kind of defeats the purpose no? How much can I get away with and still perform well? Though I suppose that's a pretty hard to answer question...

tyddynroger

you could just simply divide it into thirds:



1.bottom piece
2.damaged piece
3.Top trim

you could also make an undamage piece and various damaged pieces so you can build a nice variety of buildings.

tehfailsafe

Yeah, that's what I was realising, my plan for the modules was too small. Considering the number of buildings I was thinking I needed to have lots of re-usability, but then I ran into the issue I was explaining above, 8000 modules required. So in the end I guess the larger module will work out better, but I can't have too many different types of buildings without running into performance issues no?