I’ve started developing a game for pc. I started the journey with the exterior design of the building that the character will live in. I have modular parts like Wall with window, wall with door etc. I unwrapped them separetly and textured them one by one on Substance painter. You can realize seams between two different meshes but they are not that bad.
In a nutshell is it a correct workflow? The game will be on pc so should I be worried about having lots mesh with lots of materials?
What you did works, but it depends on how many pieces you have. This will be fine for a few parts to a few dozens of parts (if the resolution isn’t excessive).
If you have hundreds of different variants with unique materials, then you have to be concerned about running out of memory. In that case, there are other workflows you can use that will be lighter on the number of textures.
You could treat the building’s materials the same way landscapes are usually done in games. Have a bank of a few generic textures, then use masks to blend between those textures depending on the part of the object. This could even be used to blend in dirt texture, besides switching materials on different pieces. The advantage of this method is that you can use tiling textures and get much better resolution from up close, which can be good for something as big as a building.
Use texture atlas / trim sheets. Then, you can texture different parts of a building by placing the UVs over the correct sections.
You could even use a mix of both. Treat the bigger sections like walls and roofs like landscapes, with tiling textures and masks, then do the smaller props like windows and doors with a texture atlas.
Welcome! What game engine are you using? At least Unreal Engine has this very handy parent material system, with which you can make several material instances based on one parent material, and add color variations etc to them. So if the game engine you will be using has some material modification tools like UE has, you might not need to make every single needed material beforehand. Especially if they are tiled textures.
A modular workflow is a common and efficient way to build a game environment. If you are sharing materials and textures wherever you can then this is good. For the seams if they are using the same texture it’s likely a difference in texel density from the way your UVs line up with the texture or your texture is not seamlessly repeating.
There are a few ways you can make rendering more efficient by using techniques that @etn249 has mentioned. If you are concerned with performance you should look at frame debugger to see what is taking the most time and resources to render.
What game engine are you using? At least Unreal Engine has this very handy parent material system, with which you can make several material instances based on one parent material, and add color variations etc to them. So if the game engine you will be using has some material modification tools like UE has, you might not need to make every single needed material beforehand. Especially if they are tiled textures.