Apartment layout question

[JessieG]

So for a project I'm working on I'm making the interior of an apartment. I know modularity is very useful for this type of thing, but I'm not sure of the way I should go about this. I have 3 different rooms, 2 bathrooms, kitchen, and living room, and all will be fairly different in terms of size, window and door placement, shape, etc. Would it be feasible to have separate meshes for each room, for example: room 1 made up of 4 different meshes for the walls, 1 mesh for the floor, and 1 mesh for the ceiling, room 2 with 4 different meshes (since these walls are different sizes from the first room) a floor mesh, and a ceiling mesh, etc.

I'm just a bit worried that having unique meshes for each wall of each room would be bad for performance, though I intend to layout the UVs in a way that would allow 1 material per room (using a master material and some material instances) for the walls, 1 for the ceilings, and 1 for the floor.

I want to avoid using a single wall piece that's repeated because of seam problems and the different shapes that would be required for the rooms, so would this option be viable?

[CreateNPlay]

Model each room then and use multi-sub materials.

[JessieG]

That would involve having to up the resolution of lightmaps though wouldn't it? Would one larger lightmap for each room be more efficient than having each wall, floor, ceiling, etc have its own smaller res lightmap?

[Max Power]

The single mesh per room with a multi-sub mat works well. Yes, you will have to up the lightmap res, but probably not too much.

If the walls/floors/ceiling are simple enough, room interiors is one of the few times BSP is viable.

Unique meshes isn't always bad for performance. It can be more draws, but it's also easier to cull meshes out sooner.

In an apartment I build a while back, I used BSP for the ceiling and floor for a few spots, and modular static mesh pieces for the walls which has modeled trim and wainscoting.

Plenty of options really just up to what feels right and looks best for you.

[JessieG]

Hmmmm, I'll try out the multi sub option first then and see if it works out. I'm going to have some rooms shifting (kind of like a strange dream sequence where you enter a room, then leave through the same door and you're in a different area) so each room as a single mesh may work well, especially since all of the walls of the apartment together with molding on them come out to roughly only 2000 tris total. I also have separate walls (two rooms next to each other don't share the same wall mesh, there's two side by side) so that should make things quite simple.