General Advice Needed

[Maskimus]

Hi, I'm fairly new to modelling and would like some general help and advice on a few subjects.

Iv been working on this building to be used as a game asset



The model itself is built of many parts like box's / cylinders, my question is does everything need to be joined to become 1 model before i unwrap it ?
if so how should i go about doing this? with attach,welding,boolean union or some other method?

Also Is it not possible to use separate uvmaps for different parts of a model or is this in general a bad decision?

Thanks

[Elliott]

Hey Maskimus,

Modelling and joining everything is something I wouldn't recommend, you'll be making it really difficult for yourself if you model things that way. For environments you generally want to float things and keep them seperate, this is a good practice because if you work in modularity the pipline for that revolves around using floating geometry and snapping it to other pieces without welding the points.

Not only that but It's alot faster, looking at this building you can UV and texture one pillar and have them all done, maybe two for variation. Same with the upper area, one vertical beam, that's all the others done with simple duplicating. It's all about breaking down a structure into re-usable chunks, which may also be usable on other buildings too.

You need to define what game the building is gonna be for if you want to texture it accordingly, is it a building a player will get close to? Or a building in the distance. Maybe It's a Total War: Shogun style building meant to be seen from that isometric type of angle. Again this all defines how you texture and model something, basing it off of a player perspective and prioritizing the geometry and resolution accordingly.


Hope this helps,

Elliott

[Maskimus]

thanks for clearing that up Elliot