I see that a popular strategy among some is creating modular models that can be arranged in a variety of ways to create new assets so that you don’t need to create new models. But is this actually that effective? I made a brief attempt at this once but after a while I just started making everything from scratch because there were so many situations where I had to make new and new pieces because there was something I wanted to do that I wasn’t able to with the existing pre-made pieces I had made.
Are modular assets really that much more time saving than just making everything from the ground up?
Live Link for example one could export the thing that does not fit and hook up to UE4 and update the asset in real time and if at some point if say between 3ds Max/Maya one could push/pull via a DCC pipeline the edit abilities becomes transparent. Toss in datasmith the modular asset becomes just another primitive.
In 3ds Max for example you can use an AEC object to create walls, doors, windows so using live link there is no real need to use a modular asset as everything becomes fit to finish.
Overall facades are cheap, can be edit in place, and deco can be added as needed.
Deco is where modular can help out as part of the optimization process as per component they can be instanced as well culled cutting down on render requirements.