I am working on a small FPS multiplayer. It requires small villages(think of COD map sizes). I’m trying to figure out what the best ways is to build my levels. I really like the modular assets approuch, which can speed up the creation of the levels. The biggest problem is to decide how to texture them. First I started to create assets so I can create houses(walls, walls with door, walls with window, etc) with a fixed size. Each piece was 2 meters wide and 3 meters high, so I could UV map them to make sure the seamless textures would indeed be seamless if I positioned 2 pieces in the level next to eachother. But the limitation of the fixed size started to bug me. So I looked into WorldAlignedTexture. I’m getting pretty good results, but as I am a beginner in UE4 I have no clue if this is going to get me into trouble later on. My goal is to make basic assets(walls, floors, walls with window openings(which I decorate with different window models)) which I can then use to create a wide diversity of houses/buildings.
Overall I think I have three choices:
- Create and texture each house/building seperatly
- Create fixed size modular pieces
- Use WorldAlignedTexture
The third option could also give me the advantage I can use some material blending to make the pieces look different(little dirt here and there) if used on larger surfaces.
I also looked into vertex painting, but it requires a lot more vertices in my models. I dont know if thats gonna hurt performance if used on many buildings(say 50)?
So, the question is: what is the best path to take? What are your experiences/learned lessons on this matter? Any tips? Or perhaps some interesting material to read?