Reality Factory

Hey guys, this is aimed at those of you using MS3D, of course.
*points at Juutis and AgentArrow*

So anyway, I'll try to make as much sense of this as possible.
I have a large texture that I'm trying to map to a gun model I'm working on.
The texture itself is yet unfinished; the only part currently on the image is the magazine/clip map.
So, here's the problem. In my model, the magazine/clip group is just a rectangular box; i.e. it has 6 sides. When I assign the material and everything, I go into the texture coordinate editor to map it correctly.
However, I am only able to map it from one side (e.g. front, back, left, right, etc). I can't seem to map all the sides to a different part of the texture.

Here's a screen of my TCE, showing where the texture pieces should go:



I know your instant reaction would be to tell me to RTFM, but it's honestly been no help to me.
Any help with this would be great, it's holding up my dev schedule.

Edit: oops... that's a leaked image right there xD

Make front, back, top and bottom their own groups, then map them by region.

Thanks for the info, that seems to work!

Not to be ungrateful; but is there a more elegant way to do this? It's going to be a pain for more complicated models :/

Well, I'm not sure, but you may have been able to just use the region method, map by bottom, top, etc. This may be the way to do more complicated models. I have not tried to do anything very complicated.

Well, I'm not sure, but you may have been able to just use the region method, map by bottom, top, etc. This may be the way to do more complicated models. I have not tried to do anything very complicated.

Yup. Thats the way to go. Split to groups anduse the region method.
Milkshape does not have the best uv editor in the world.
Lithunwrap is probably the best free one. Unwrap save a uv map & paint the textures in a paint program. It isn't easy that way either. Google for tutorials on texturing using lithunwrap.

bernie wrote:

Well, I'm not sure, but you may have been able to just use the region method, map by bottom, top, etc. This may be the way to do more complicated models. I have not tried to do anything very complicated.

Yup. Thats the way to go. Split to groups anduse the region method.
Milkshape does not have the best uv editor in the world.
Lithunwrap is probably the best free one. Unwrap save a uv map & paint the textures in a paint program. It isn't easy that way either. Google for tutorials on texturing using lithunwrap.

I thought you'd need to do groups and regions!! Thanks, bernie!

I recommend LithUnWrap. It's definitely much easier than MilkShape's UV editor. It can unwrap the basic primitives (boxes, cylinders, spheres) with one button press. With complex models you're gonna have to dig in and edit it vertex by vertex, though. Just make sure you unwrap before assigning the smoothing groups since LithUnWrap messes them up and you'll have to do them again.

I use LithUnwrap as well. It's a very good piece of software!

I always group the faces I see in from the perspective. I tend to make a lot of groups that way, but it gives me the most control of the actual UV mapping.