Hi I am modeling a bird and I currently have it separated into many objects, such as the head object, the beak, the wings, etc…
I was wondering how I could keep these objects separate, but make them share the same UV map?
Thank you for your time!
Just [shift] + select them all and hit [J] for join. As far as UV map, just mark the seam around each separately. Here is good tutorial.
thanks, but when I select all of my objects in object mode then press J, nothing happens. I also wanna make it clear that I don’t want the objects joined because I want to be able to separate the parts of the bird if I want to edit it later. I just want all of the object’s UVs to display.
Also I tried to export the UV map as a .png and when it saves it the edges/faces don’t show up, it’s a blank background.
You may use different part of one picture as texture for different object.
For example - I have cube and shpere. I unwrap cube and make the texture for it from the left side of the texture image (just scale and move the uv greed to the left), then I unwrap sphere and make the texture for it from the right side of the same texture image.
To join separate objects you need to press CTRL+J to join them. If you want to map each object individually, there is a script called ‘Consolidate into one image’ in the UV editor which will try to re-arrange any separate maps into one. You may get a lot of dead space though.
Test it out on some primitives ar something simple to see if it works for you. If not, them joining each object, mapping, then separating them again is the way to go.