Quote:
Originally Posted by Wiggles
Also how can you adjust the size of the texture map? When you unwrap a model your constrained to the area in that square, so wouldn't you need to make it bigger to have better quality textures?
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All you have to do is make the actual bitmap larger. If you use a non-square texture, the texture coordinate editor will scale the boundary to reflect the aspect ratio of your bitmap.
Texture coordinates always run from 0.0 to 1.0. What they represent is a percentage of the bitmap, versus a specific pixel. i.e. a coordinate of .5 means "50% of the bitmap", so if your map was 256x256, that would be pixel 128. If your map was 600x600, it would be pixel 300.
Merging won't hurt anything, but it's often easier to work with if it's still in pieces. "Group mode" is a good alternative when you want to manipulate many parts as one without actually merging them.
You don't have to remap if you change the *dimensions* of the model, but if you change the *shape* of the model then you will [often] want to re-map the model. Otherwise you will have distortions in the map because the shape of the texture coordinates does not match the shape of the actual surface. There are exceptions to this, of course--sometimes you may intentionally have a UV map that does not match the shape of the model because it makes it easier to paint, or it avoids seams. This is especially true on "organic" models where small distortions in the map will be barely noticeable but seams are much more obvious.
Incidentally, while you can use any texture dimensions you like, I'd highly recommend sticking to square, powers-of-two. (i.e.64x64, 128x128,256x256,512x512, etc.) For real-time models this is a must, as many games and viewers will support nothing but, and even those that do support other dimensions will usually see a *significant* performance gain if you stick to desirable sizes. For pre-renders this isn't as important, but even then it does improve render times with some renderers.