How do I create efficient indoor 3D enviroments?

Howdy, everyone. I'm working on my first project that is heavily using 3D. The concept mirrors Jurassic Park for the SNES, which features isometric 2D movement outside of buildings and 3D classic Doom-style movement inside.

I've looked at several examples which seem to rely on heavily repeating 3D cube shapes, which looks a bit samey. I could increase the number of cube shapes to get variety, but I always get this feeling that if I am just repeating something over and over in a program, then I am not using all of the tools available to me.

So I did some digging and I saw a few people bending sprites with meshes in order to get interesting 3D shapes. I would still need to create individual sprites for every chunk of wall inside a building. It seems like a less efficient version of a 3D shape, honestly.

And finally, I figured, "well, what if I could bend a tilemap? That would solve the need to create new sprites all the time. I could create the assets and then draw all of my interiors with ease!" but it seems combing a mesh with a tilemap is technically impossible.

So... are there any methods I might be missing? Is the repeating cube truly my best option?

You’ve pretty much covered what is available. There is also a pay for third party plug-in called 3dobject by mikal that lets you load 3d meshes.

You can load 3d files such as .obj with vanilla features too. You just need to parse the file, then create and distort the sprites to make up the polygons. I guess that isn’t what most want to do though.

But to answer you last question, yes, cubes is your easiest option and the kind of 3d construct is currently designed for. Anything beyond that takes more work and creativity with the features available.

Allrighty then! I appreciate it, depending on the complexity of a room either sprites or cubes will probably build out my areas. Much appreciated!