I have considered going modular but I opted against it since there wouldn't be a lot of reusable meshes in this particular building. Should I go modular even if it means building modular pieces that are only going to be used once? If so, how would that improve my efficiency? And if I am right with doing it this way, how to…
It does not have to be strictly modular nor reusable. Breaking up in manageable logical chunks is important though. You'll save iteration time and avoid tediousness of building collision mesh for the whole structure.
If you're wanting to use UDK then modular is a good idea. Not only because it's "the Unreal way" but because you're going to, er, hit a wall when it comes to collision. Unreal handles collision in a few ways. If you build using BSP then collision is handled automatically. Your model at the moment is so simple that you…
For non modular buildings with an interior I just build my rough outer shape and run a shell modifier on it - then I just model the inside and outside. I'll usually detach the exterior and interior while I'm working on it and re-attach & weld at the end..
By multiple UV channels I'll assume you mean material IDs, ie: applying one material to the inside and another to the outside (probably something that tiles horizontally). Just realize that you will have a bunch more texture fetches for each modular piece.
The first cottage is pretty easy to make modular. Just make a roof and make some window pieces and doors and then repeat them around the outside. for the second version you would probably want to make separate walls and roof pieces and copy those around.
Different styles of lighting models, transform cost, physics and many other factors determine the best way to create a model. But for UDK it may work ok. It's not the best way to do work though as it's tedious going backwards and forwards every time you want to change the position of a wall. Usually you'd build your walls…
I have a similar question, creating a modular wall for a house, and it has an exterior face and an interior face. And this is made as one big fairly thin square with the top and bottom polys cut off, so you have 4 faces...when unwrapping that it seems like there is no way to use all the texture space, because you have 2…
From my experience in the MMO field, most houses are one offs with an exterior and interior. It's just the placement of the houses, props, texture varients, lighting and terrain treatment that helps add variety. If the house is built inside max with modularity in mind, it's easy for you or another artist to build varients…