3DS or Maya: All One Mesh or Multiple Objects?

[FlapJack]

Hey all,

Possibly a stupid question here, but I was wondering what the typical modeling process is for creating static meshes to import into UDK. Is it kosher to use multiple objects and export them as one? Or when I'm exporting to UDK, should every single thing in my scene be part of the same object? Here's a really dumb example that should hopefully help illustrate my question:

Multiple Objects: http://imgur.com/hadQW
All one Editable Poly: http://imgur.com/uyJDh

The reason I ask is because sometimes it's easier to have multiple objects rather than trying to extrude or cut everything off of the base mesh I'm working on or to simply attach them as I did in the photos. IE creating a staircase with rails. It's easier to add in a few cylinders that intersect the edge of the stairs for my railings rather than trying to extrude cylinders off of the base stairs. It also simplifies texture mapping. Does this make sense? Please don't flame me too hard on these questions, I claim to be nothing but a hobbyist

[Jacky]

Either way should be fine as long as you set your lightmap UV's properly.

[JessieG]

Also, you can use multiple intersecting objects as a single mesh in UDK, but don't try to combine multiple objects and import an entire scene from Mac as one single mesh. You need to break them up to reduce polycount on single meshes and to allow for better resolution for lightmaps.

[darthviper107]

Yeah, you can export something that's made up of several separate objects, like a staircase. But you'd export that itself as one object, rather than the whole building. So the building would be made up of several static meshes in UDK, but each of those static meshes might be made up of several separate objects in 3ds Max.

[FlapJack]

Roger that! Thanks everyone! I guess I have this fear when modeling that I'm going to do something that will break the engine. It seems like there's so many do's and don'ts for "proper" modeling that the slightest thing may just be an earth-shattering problem.

[darthviper107]

There's nothing that's an earth-shattering problem, just a few weird things that make it confusing.

[FlapJack]

I'll keep that in mind. I guess the question I have is, how much of my map should be brush-based and how much should be mesh-based? Currently I'm just using brushes to get the basic blocking of the level down. Where the floors, walls and ceilings are, and then later I plan to put static meshes on top of all that, or in some cases completely replace a brush with static meshes.