very n00b question, but I´d like to hear your opinions on this. Take a simple room, for example the lobby of the hospital - YouTube at 10:46 . Would you build the room in modular pieces that join at corners for less visible lightmap seams or would you create the whole room in your 3d application in one piece? I guess the problem is that the uv-layout and the texel density for the lightmap would be quite small for all the wall and floor pieces, if it´s just one mesh.
Personally with scenes like this, if we’re just looking at the structural layout of the walls, floor, and ceiling, I would build the wall meshes that I need as separate pieces for something like this. This isn’t a definitive answer either because I have built small shacks and rooms that are a single mesh for the walls. This just depends on what works best for you. If it’s a smaller a scene that everything will be on screen at once then having it as a single mesh would work just as well. If it’s a larger level that can have assets culled by distance then having it as modular would work great for this.
For texel density this is something to keep in mind as well. And by having multiple wall meshes it’s much easier to keep the texel density relative to the other wall meshes.
I hope this helps and if you have any specific questions or examples you need help with feel free to ask!
I am not very experienced in creating interior scenes, but I have been working on a few large interiors lately (sort of learning and playing around) and I have found that making the scene as modular as possible works better for me.
Until you add some interaction to the scene and actually play in it a bit, it is hard to know exactly how it will feel. After playing a few minutes maybe you say “well, that door actually needs to be further down the hall.” If the scene is modular enough, you just grab the section of wall with the door and switch it to the one without the door. But if it is one large mesh, you have to go back into Maya (or whatever you use) and move things around and re-export / import etc.
Like I said though, I am not an expert, just an enthusiast.
