Texturing Models

[John_L]

I'm in the process of making a model. I'm wondering about the best way to go about texturing it. I'm using anima8or and UVMapper, but it would be exceedingly difficult to create one texture for then entire model, yet if I create each component separately, (or just the major parts), how would I 'join' them all together into a single mesh, or how would I go about specifying multiple meshes?

What am I missing here?

Thanks

PS... I'm using Photoshop for the actual texturing work.

 

[Donamy]

You can use multiple textures in one mesh, I used about 42 textures, in the VC mesh for the SSU.

 

[GregBurch]

I don't use UV mapper, or any kind of "texture wrapping" at all. I do everything with "tiling." It's primitive, but it works for me.

 

[n0mad23]

You can texture an entire component easy enough, and you've probably figured this one out already. You can also select individual polygons and texture each one separately. See this as an example: http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showpost.php?p=36293&postcount=184 The entire geodesic dome here is a single object. Using the Object Point/Edit and Select Face, I've textured each of these polygons individually (basically, there are some possibilities of selecting several similar faces and texturing them all at once this way, too.)

Be sure to use the Arc/Rotate feature to center your object before texturing. It'll line up much better that way.

 

[John_L]

Thanks for the input everyone. I managed to tinker around enough with UVMapper enough to finally figure out how to get everything laid out flat, and not overlapping. I abhor using Anim8or's uv texture mapping, it's horrible. I prefer a big flat uv map image to texture with, then just output the dds file and I'm good to go.

 

[Sherrif of Nottingham]

Blenders UV mapping tool is so amazing once you learn how to use it, you can even make the texture using "ms paint" style tools, thou I've used it for creating textures to import into DAZ studios, or in other words, Poser Pro.

Lol Except You GregBurch, whatever your doing is making your addons great.

 

[John_L]

'MS Paint' style tools don't cut it for me... I need my Photoshop, with all of it's wonderful bells and whistles (layers, styles, etc), to be successful at making a decent looking texture. Blender is neat, and really powerful from what I understand. I'd probably even use it if I could get the interface down, but for now, Anim8or is the modeling software I'm most familiar with at the moment. Actually, I'm probably more proficient with the internal (but less powerful) modeling tools in Second Life. I've been a builder/scripter in there the last 2 years, and I've become pretty efficient with it.