UV unwrapping and multiple textures in 2.57b

I’ve been using 2.49 for a while and I’ve been able to unwrap models in the past to separate textures quite easily. However I’m trying to use 2.57b now and regardless of what I do I follow I can’t seem to get the separate pieces to unwrap to separate textures. They always unwrap to the same texture, or worse will properly unwrap the portion I want to (with separate UV Texture spaces selected) but also put the rest of the mesh into the UV texture space as unset triangles.

Can someone give me a step by step for unwrapping a cube extruded once to apply a separate texture to one half of the cube?

That’s actually not ‘worse’, it’s what you want to happen. Select ‘the rest of the mesh’, unwrap it, and then select the image you want to texture it. There’s a simple example on my homepage, but since you asked for a cube, here it is:-

Extrude the cube to double height, and mark seams along all the long edges:



Select one half (upper or lower), and unwrap. Add an image (here just a generated grid):


Select the other half and unwrap. It will initially share the image of the first half, but if you now add a new image, that one will be used for the selected faces. I’ve used a different flavour of generated grid:

Best wishes,
Matthew

I followed your suggestions on your homepage tutorial, and attempted this, but I totally don’t get these results with my model (I requested the cube because it’s easy to model and unwrap, as opposed to making a character to unwrap). The various textures only show up on my character when I choose the appropriate UV Texture in any mode, and in one of the three (body, incidentally the first one) my character is completely untextured in object mode. In edit mode he is properly unwrapped though and only his body has the texture it’s suppose to.

I was told there’s a way to link from a 2.5x blend file into 2.49, perhaps if I can figure out how to do that I can unwrap my character there using the interface I know works for me. Which requires me to state, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Addendum:
I tried this experiment with a cube as well and I can manage to get it to display separate textures in object mode and edit mode, but in edit mode the UVs are overlapping each other in the UV space. I remember in 2.49 you would unwrap a section of a mesh and it would go to its own space, and unwrapping another section of the mesh would unwrap to another space without displaying the original even if you later selected all vertices. This seems like a step backward in functionality, displaying the complete UV on the same map when everything is selected.

Yes, of course they are. The whole point of unwrapping in pieces rather than all at once is to reuse the UV space. If you only want to see the faces for one image at a time, toggle UV/Image Editor -> View -> UV Local View (in 2.5x it’s a checkbox, in 2.49 there are separate menu entries for local and global view).

Best wishes,
Matthew

And that was the key. For some reason without the UV local view the overlap would draw textures from the other parts (showing black with random spots I’d draw for testing over the head, when it’s suppose to draw over the elbows alone). I don’t know what I am/was doing wrong, but since it’s enabled it’s working like I expected it to in 2.49. At any rate, thanks for pointing it out.

any short video showing this in 2.57 ?

would be nice to better understand it in 2.57!

thanks
happy 2.5