How-To: UV map merged models

**TWoxy** · August 27, 2008, 01:42 PM

Firstly, this tutorial was written to help a friend who had prior experience in modding, so if you are confused regarding this text please do not hesitate to contact me.

Secondly, I have written as comprehensively on this topic as possible, resulting in a rather large and seemingly intimidating block of text. You will find though, that this process is in fact rather simple and by covering every step in detail I can save yourself and myself time that would be otherwise wasted answering simple and unnecessary questions.

Now, I have attempted to create a tutorial which can act as a guide to those who wish to coordinate the UV maps of their merged models, so that the model appears correctly textured in-game (and in 3D modelling programs, for that matter). Many think that it is necessary to UV map merged models in order for them to appear correctly; however, they simply need to coordinate the already present UV maps of the merged model. Luckily for those who wish to do this and happen to be reading these words, the text below instructs you how to do exactly that.

To begin, decide on which of the two textures you will use for the merged model (I will refer to this chosen texture as the "base texture"); I suggest choosing the one which contains the majority of your model's texture (e.g, if I merge an entire musketeer and a reiter head, I would select the musketeer's texture as it contains the largest proportion of my merged model's texture). You could select either texture, but for convenience I would advise you to follow my own suggestion above. Then, transfer the sections of the other texture that will be used by your merged model on to the base texture (by transfer, I mean copy and paste). You need to transfer the copied sections into the black areas of the base texture, so that it does not interfere with the base texture. Now, save the texture and open your merged model in Milkshape (I assume you are using Milkshape). Then, go to the materials tab and click on "Figure". This step is shown in the image link below.

http://img515.imageshack.us/my.php?image=91111340ek3.png

Then, click the bar entitled "<none>" (there are two of these, select the first one). I have indicated this bar in the image link below.

http://img516.imageshack.us/my.php?image=94289827sk0.png

Clicking on this bar will open up an "Open Texture" window; find your texture and double-click on it to load it up on to your merged model. The texture that you load up must be in .dds format. Once it has been loaded on to your model (the weapons and shield of your model should remain untextured, as the attachment texture is what is used to texture these parts of the model), press Ctrl+A to select all, then go to the "Window" tab at the upper left-hand side of the screen and from the drop-down menu select "Texture Coordinate Editor" (Alternatively, Ctrl+T should open up the texture Coordinate Editor, but you must still press Ctrl+A to select all). This should open up a window displaying your texture. Now, this is where it gets slightly complicated; you must select a part of your merged model that has not been textured from the drop-down menu on the right-hand side of the screen. To do this, click the "Select" button located above the drop-down window. This step is depicted in the image link below.

http://img399.imageshack.us/my.php?image=34938441pm6.png

These untextured parts are those from the other texture, not the base texture. Remember, you transferred the sections of the texture, for these parts of the model, on to the base texture. Now, once your part is selected, click the "Move" button (this is located to the right of the "Select" button) and carefully drag your untextured part's UV map on to it's corresponding section of the texture. Repeat this with all of your merged model's untextured parts and then close the Texture Coordinate Editor. Your model should appear correctly textured. Save the model and then coordinate the UV maps of the remaining merged meshes (e.g, the first model that you UV mapped was the lod_0 mesh; now you must UV map the lod_1, lod_2 and lod_3 meshes). Remember that when merging meshes, they must both be of the same lod ("lod" stands for "level of detail"); do not merge an lod_0 and an lod_1 for example, as the merged model would not appear correctly. If you wish to merge two models and you cannot find the lod_3 mesh of one of them, forget it. Some units only have an lod_0, lod_1 and lod_2; your merged model will just have to use three lods when you code it into the game.

If you want to coordinate the UV maps of attachments such as weapons and shield, use the process described above with one minor exception: instead of selecting "Figure" when loading up your texture, select "Attachment". Obviously, the texture that you select to load up will have to be an attachment texture. Apart from this, the method is exactly the same.

Voila, you now know how to coordinate the UV maps of merged models.

If you have any questions don't hesitate to contact me via PM, as I rarely visit this thread.