I'm new to forums so I apologize if this isn't in the right spot.

I just have a few questions as I'm just starting to create some assets in Blender and use in Unreal 4.

 

If I want to have a city setting and have a particular building that the player can go inside of, complete with elevators, multiple rooms, several floors including basement levels, etc., how should I go about modeling that? I know I would need to do it in sections but how sectional should I go? Like should each floor be it's own "level" or scene that loads? Should I make an external model that the player sees while around the city which doesnt have anything inside but only load floor 1 when they enter the doors, etc.?

If you use any technical terms, please explain a little since I'm still learning.

Thank you for your help in advance!

Hi Domosama,

It's a good question.

When the game is rendering too many things on the computer will begin to slow down.  When the Frames Per Second gets below 30 (below 60 for some people) the player can get frustrated at the slowness.

There are two ways to solve this problem:
- Create the build very simple and easy to render
- Break up the building into "sections" that load and unload

The first option is the easiest, but it doesn't look great.

To answer your question of how to break up the building into "sections" depends on where you want your game to load.

Loading points have to be choke points.  The player has to cross through these places to trigger the loading.  If the player goes through a window they may pass the loading point and cause issues.  Some common loading choke points:
- The front and back doors (Done in Skyrim)
- Elevators (Done in Mirrors Edge)
- Points where it's not easy for the player to go backwards (Like the narrow passages in Tomb Raider)

If your building is easy to render you could have the entire interior of the building as one object.  The doors can be loading points.

If you want to hide your loading screens you could split the building by floors.  The elevator could be a hidden loading screen between floors.

 

If you use Unreal Engine, then you would make the interiors as sub-levels that stream in if the player gets close.