Help making a multimesh model into single mesh
by Donald Teal · in Artist Corner · 07/23/2010 (3:47 pm) · 4 replies
Since everyone was helpful on my last request about the detail textures. I have a nother problem I need to solve.
I have several building models and character models that I think look really good, but the problem is that they each have several different textures that make up the model. For example, my main character model has a seperate file for the arm textures, the leg textures, the head textures, the torso texture, the feet, the hands, and the tail and wings.
The thought was, to give me flexibility in using differnt textures to create custom looks just by swapping textures on the fly, but now I am being told that the multitextures are causing performance issues in Torque3D 1.0.1, and its more effiecent to have a single texture for each model.
So my problem is as a novice in 3dsmax how to I get the multimeshes into a single mesh texture?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated, and bonus thanks for pointing to a tutorial that shows me how to do it.
I have several building models and character models that I think look really good, but the problem is that they each have several different textures that make up the model. For example, my main character model has a seperate file for the arm textures, the leg textures, the head textures, the torso texture, the feet, the hands, and the tail and wings.
The thought was, to give me flexibility in using differnt textures to create custom looks just by swapping textures on the fly, but now I am being told that the multitextures are causing performance issues in Torque3D 1.0.1, and its more effiecent to have a single texture for each model.
So my problem is as a novice in 3dsmax how to I get the multimeshes into a single mesh texture?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated, and bonus thanks for pointing to a tutorial that shows me how to do it.
About the author
#2
08/12/2010 (10:46 am)
I don't use 3dsmax, but i think if you where to create a 2nd uv channel you could bake a single texture onto it. then load uv2's cords into uv1 and use the single baked texture. 
#4
08/16/2010 (6:07 pm)
If each model is also made up of separate pieces attach them all into a single model. Just be sure to click the check box "preserve UV's" i believe this is in the edit poly roll out. Once you have a single mesh add a unwrap uvw, you should see all your uvs on top of each other. From there you can select each group with select element and rearrange the UVS to sit in your texture space. After that its simply merging your textures into one map over the new UV layout. 
Torque Owner Henry Todd
Atomic Walrus
waylon-art.com/uvw_tutorial/uvwtut_01.html
In your case, you can probably skip a good portion of this (though I recommend reading the whole tutorial for future UVW mapping), since I assume your individual elements are already mapped reasonably, just not hooked together. You can probably basically use edit mesh->attach to start hooking the meshes together into 1 mesh. Then you can use the "element" selection type to select the pieces which used to be distinct meshes if you still need to access them as individual pieces.
At that point I'd suggest you select the whole thing in edit mesh (same effect as using mesh select as in the tutorial) and add an "Unwrap UVW" modifier (should exist in every version of 3ds), then use the "pack UV's" tool to automatically stack the individual mappings into a single square of UV-space.
He uses this tool here (2nd step on this page):
waylon-art.com/uvw_tutorial/uvwtut_08.html
That tool is available in the "Edit UVW's" window of the unwrap UVW modifier. In theory this should nicely stack all the different mappings you already did for the various parts of your model into a single texture space, allowing you to build a single texture based on these mapping outlines. Assuming you already have textures for each part, that might be as simple as just Photoshopping all of those textures into 1 square and scaling appropriately.
You *can* just take a screenshot of the Edit UVW's window and paste that into photoshop, but to make sure things really line up nicely I'd go with the tutorial author's suggestion and use Texporter:
www.cuneytozdas.com/software/3dsmax/#Texporter
That'll give you a precise mapping model to work from at the exact resolution of your choice.
Let me know if any of that was confusing and/or misleading. I haven't been doing any modeling for the last few months, so I'm just describing the process from memory and that tutorial.