Well you have to try and work as modular as possible. Look at your model and find pieces that can be reused in other assets and make them a separate piece (I'm not talking like tiny bolts, but bigger pieces like maybe trim or supports). For example, when I model a house or building for ue3, I make "legos", my wall sections are usually small squares or rectangles that snap together to form a whole room. Usually my entire building form will be made out of the exact same mesh only retextured for walls,floors, ceilings etc.....
If I get to a computer I can post some photos and links, but I'm sure someone will beat me to it
You can select polygons and use Detach in the Editable Poly rollout of the Modify panel to make the selected polygons into a separate unique object, if that's what you mean.
I'm not really sure you understand the workflow. The point isn't to make a unique cave, then carve it up. Its to make a few pieces that tile and use them to create a full cave.
So instead of 2 rooms and a hallway that are divided up into 96 separate unique pieces. You have only 3 unique pieces (wall, floor, ceiling) that are copied and rotated to make up the rooms and hallway.
If you're going to carve up a unique mesh, just have all the pieces share the same pivot point. Probably breaking them off like mop suggested would work, as they would all share the original objects pivot.
That way you don't need to worry about moving pieces around in unreal they'll all be based off the same position in the map. But this isn't really working modular.
If you're going to work modular. Then you need to align your chunks to the grid and make sure your pivot point snaps to the grid. You can then use 2D snaps with it set to pivot and grid on the entire object, to make sure they tile correctly.
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If I get to a computer I can post some photos and links, but I'm sure someone will beat me to it
So instead of 2 rooms and a hallway that are divided up into 96 separate unique pieces. You have only 3 unique pieces (wall, floor, ceiling) that are copied and rotated to make up the rooms and hallway.
If you're going to carve up a unique mesh, just have all the pieces share the same pivot point. Probably breaking them off like mop suggested would work, as they would all share the original objects pivot.
That way you don't need to worry about moving pieces around in unreal they'll all be based off the same position in the map. But this isn't really working modular.
If you're going to work modular. Then you need to align your chunks to the grid and make sure your pivot point snaps to the grid. You can then use 2D snaps with it set to pivot and grid on the entire object, to make sure they tile correctly.
It might be a good idea to plan out your cuts ahead of time, or use the slice plane to place them in places that can easily be hidden.