How Do I Add Multiple Textures to Mesh Object

[Wolfen Greggan]

Ok, decided it's time to learn to texture mesh objects so I bought a mesh guitar kit that comes with a sample and 14 (!) UVW maps for texturing. It didn't come with a dae to export to a 3D program (not really fluent in any of those yet, although I've played with Blender a bit). It already has the shadow inclusion map on the example.

I'm reasonable sure I can add the textures to the UVW maps in Gimp, but then what do I do with them? I've done this with sculpts before, but that's comparatively simple - 1 face, 1 texture. So, without getting too technical, can anyone tell me if this is possible? I'm guessing that it must be because if it needs to be uploaded to Blender to texture, there would've been a dae file included and not just the texture maps (for want of a better term). Also, I've been doing some reading and learned that mesh objects can have up to 8 faces. This came with 14 texture maps (guitar body, fretboard, knobs, strings, etc). Can they all be added?

Sorry if this seems like a basic noob question, but I gotta start somewhere, right?  I know it has to have something to do with layering the textures but I have no clue how to do that and haven't been able to find any posts about doing this. If anyone could point me to a post or tutorial it would be very much appreciated.

[ObviousAltIsObvious]

they probably don't expect you to rip this model to get it into an outside editor, if they gave you shadows. you can use select face in the SL object editor to look at the textures that are on the sample. it is usually easy to tell what uv map goes where once you see them. you can put replacement textures on the same way, with select face.

if there are14 uv maps, the guitar is probably 2 or more mesh parts linked together. there could also be discontinuous faces, and the maker didn't feel like combining the different uv portions into a single image.

some of the uv maps could be shareable. if a map's triangles do not cover the entire area of the texture, and a second map's triangles all fit in the blank space left behind, then you can combine those in one texture.

 

[Charles Hera]

I made a tutorial a year ago or so primarily for my customers that explains how to get your textured on an ambient map. It would be similar with a UV -- you just don't have shadows built in. And you might actually have the ambient maps too which would sort of be the norm. Still everyone does things differently.

 

http://nakedmesh.blogspot.com/p/mesh-faqs.html

 

If you have 14 then you must have a linkset object since you can only have 8 faces in SL. That shouldn't be an issue. With 14 maps however be SURE and scale the maps down as needed. If you use 512 or 1024 (heartstopping here) on 14 maps they will never load -- or it is go out to coffee time and not a good thing.

 

Good luck!

 

 

[Wolfen Greggan]

Thanks for the responses. The select faces worked (should've been able to figure that out). I'll give Charles' link a look see after work to fill in the blanks. Now to work on my Gimping skills!

[Medhue Simoni]

In Blender, SL faces are Materials. Every 3D model has a Material, which should also have a texture assigned to it. In Blender, you can generate textures for your Materials tho. If you have 14 textures for the model, you will likely have to combine some of them to fit them into the 8 faces that you need for SL. How you do this depends on the UV maps. Basically, you want to search for a video tutorial that is specifically about Materials and UV mapping.