Firstly I am still in limbo as to if I should use bsp tools for making my buildings or a program such as Maya which I have been using for static objects up till now. I have a building I have made in Maya, I have UV mapped it into 2 maps(one 512x512 and one 1024x1024) But I am finding even with a 1024x1024 map for the majority of the important exterior aspects and with the UV space ultilised to make important parts as big as possible, the fine details still may be lost due to not enuf pixels. I would think this would be rather a noticable issue when its the walls of the model that concern me, they will be seen up close. SO my question is this: If I run with my building mesh made in Maya, how many texture maps should I be aiming for? I know that if I was using a bsp level editor I would probably be putting easily 6 or 7 different texture maps for a single building. We are using .x format and the game is planned to also use normal maps Thanks in advance for any advice given

Maybe this is bad advice, but I'd say as many as you have memory for.

I would (someone correct me if im wrong), tile the textures so that your only detailing a small section of the wall, then reusing that section over and over.

slowpid has the right direction. You can get away with using just a few fairly high detail textures, just make sure they're seemless and reuse them.

In addition to tiling, allocate more texture space to the more important parts of the building ... either the most visible or the most important parts for the player (doors, etc). If the player is always at ground level then perhaps you can get away with lower resolution roof textures for example.

I don't normally both with this too much for buildings, but for characters I tend to give more texture space to faces than the feet as this is where the player will be concentrating their attention.

because of the nature of the structure and the quality of the job I am aiming for I dont want to use a lot of tiling.

But what I have done so far is re-arrange the UV's so I now have a total of 5 maps with the most visible parts like walls etc on seperate maps

cheers for the advice everyone

thirding can help make more efficiant use of your texture maps:
http://www.poopinmymouth.com/process/tips/thirding.jpg

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars uses MegaTexture technology where an entire level uses one large image (32,000 x 32,000 pixels) i can't even imagine how suck that would be to work with.