Thinking outside the blocks....

For the past week I’ve been debating on how I should handle all of the stone blocks that are used extensively throughout the temple (for the walls, floors, columns...etc). Part of this process is to insure that I am mindful of the actual placement of these elements.  I’ve been comparing the Heidelberg photographs to Ranke’s site illustrations.  From what I can see they seem very accurate. I’ve started placing proxy bricks (basic polygonal cubes) in the Pronaos and ramp.  I'm testing a few approaches to see which one might hold up better in VR. Initialy I thought I would break the various elements up into sections, then using either Mudbox or Zbrush, I would detail the proxy cubes and extract a normal map back onto a more simplistic type of geometry.  I tested this on the ramp, which kind of works.  However, because this is just a bump map if someone where to view this on a shear angle, the illusion of detail would flatten.  Just a side note, once I get into the Unreal Engine I might revisit this approach with displacement maps....or possibly vector displacement maps. My hope in using this approach is to keep the interactivity within the virtual world crisp and speedy.  I wasn’t particularly happy with the initial results, although untextured (lacking diffuse colour, specular maps….etc) I could tell that there was a fidelity issue, particularly from extreme angles.My second approach is to texture 2-3 groupings of individual low resolution blocks then hand place each one (similar to how I placed the proxy cubes to begin with).UPDATE: The known floor tiles (according to Ranke) have been placed, as of June 8th.  I'll need to fill in the gaps with a similar patterning.  But I'm moving onto the interior walls first.