Modelling guidelines for Architectual Visualization?

Development Architectural and Design Visualization
1

Greetings,

I have a few questions that I need help with regarding modelling guidelines for Architectural Visualization.

Question 1: If I were too create an apartment that will only be seen from the inside. (You wont be able to leave the apartment). Is it best to use planes for walls, ceiling and floor, or should I add thickness to them instead.
I read that it’s bad to use planes for ceiling and floor. It was better to have thickness to everything, and I should stay away from using planes. If so, why is that?

Question 2: How would you divide your models for best result? Would you have the entire apartment as one model, or do you divide it up, room by room, for best lighting.

Question 3: Would you have a baseboard as a separate model, or would it be a part of the wall, for best lighting.
Here is an image of a wall molding to show you what I mean.

I know that these questions are two side and some things really doesn’t matter. But I thought of asking before I get started modelling on my own.

2

Split things up.

Each wall should be a separate piece of geometry when you import it, and go further still. For example, give your walls thickness, but split the interior face from the rest of the wall as a separate piece of geometry. This will mean you can have more tightly controlled lightmaps.

Image isn’t showing, but I would probably keep it separate

3

Yep… spot on. Recently found this out.

4
  1. The baseboard could be done either way. If you want to be able to swap it with a different design, making it a separate model makes sense. But because a baseboard is going to be long, it’s going to waste a lot of its lightmap resolution, which is only really a concern if you are running out of GPU memory for your target platform.