Exposed Timber Work (Fachwerk)

Since I started redesigning the city museum model, I thought I would add a few extra features that were not in the original. If you check my earlier posts (see below), you will notice in the screen shots that the exposed timber work (Fachwerk) on the second floor of the museum is simply painted on in the textures; there is no real 3D "feel" to this aspect of the model. I thought about adding the exposed timber work for some time now, wondering if the extra vertices would slow down the game at all. But it is exactly this feel that makes, in my opinion, the real Fachwerk so interesting when you see these buildings in Germany:

So, now that the semester is starting to wind down and I have a little extra time on my hands, I thought that I would start adding the Fachwerk to the second level of the city museum. After checking a few sources online about how these buildings were constructed, I came up with the following (untextured) addition:

I think the addition adds much more to the real "feel" of the model, although I'm not sure what type of performance hit the game engine will take with the extra vertices. Oh well, that's what prototypes of for, I suppose. I particularly like the crisp edges of the model, although this is obviously lacking in the original buildings, which have an old, weathered look to them and a more "organic" feel; as if they have grown rather randomly through the ages. The next thing for me to work on in the coming weeks.