[DahBlount]

That's what I figured. Capships like the Hecate and Orion use multiple tile maps and they are applied to specific regions of the ship, so I am stuck using a texture for each kind of turret as well as the hull.

I'm pretty much gonna get started on UV mapping right now since I don't see any arguments against my current turret layout. Full steam ahead!!!

[Lepanto]

You should be able to put all the turrets into the same UV layout and texture.

[DahBlount]

Yeah I did a render and when I assign the textures to the main hull as a single material, all the textures (that I've made so far) get rendered properly across any subobjects with the same Smart UV Layout. There will still be quite a few textures, I'm guessing around 6 diffuse. Thankfully I will only have to make one glow, shine, and normal map. 9 textures is a terrifying amount, don't you think?

[Droid803]

You do not need 6 diffuse maps.
Could probably get away with 2, 3 tops : 1-2 for the hull (perhaps one for the debris), and one for all the textures, (each with their respective glow/shine/normal), so about 9-12 textures in total (3-4 base textures - what you see in PCS2). If your UVs don't fit well, either use a larger texture, or pack those islands better.
You don't really want to use a diffuse texture without its accompanying shine/normal maps, really - it will be noticably lacking especially next to ones that do.

[DahBlount]

That leaves me with the question of how to fit multiple UV maps into a single texture. In Blender for some reason it is impossible to just UV all the sub objects at once.

[Droid803]

You using an automatic UV or something? (that's horrible, automatic UVs suck)
Not that I know anything about how blender works but I don't see why you couldn't do it manually.

[DahBlount]

No, I always adjust UVs personally.My problem is that Blender doesn't read subobjects grouped together as one object. Basically you have to UV the hull, turrets, and turret arms as desperate maps.

[Droid803]

fuse em then split em back up (then duplicate turrets and turret the thing as necessary)?

[DahBlount]

After some looking around, I believe that is pretty much spot on because UV data is preserved over images, so I could make the sub objects into a single object and then UV map as one object. What you end up with is a texture that contains all the UV data of the objects as one piece but when you reseparate them, the maps stay in the same position on the texture with the same dimensions.
Basically, I have a lot of work to do. No big deal though, it was going to be a painstaking process anyways.

[Droid803]

yeh, uvmapping is long tedious and boring
and isn't to mentally stimulating as well, it's kind of like, the most boring part of making models
its no surprise why many people just stop at a complete mesh and then sit around waiting for other people to UVmap for them, etc.

[DahBlount]

And then no work gets done.

[esarai]

What I do is bake AO or something onto the texture and then use that to guide my placement of other objects' UVs.  Blender is supposed to have a 'draw multiple objects' function in the UV editor, but for some reason that function does not work.  Infuriating.

[The Dagger]

For UV mapping different objects into one UV there's a new addon called Texture Atlas included since Blender 2.68.
Instruction on the 2.68 release notes and/or blender wiki.

[DahBlount]

It's little bit late for all this. Already have the texture started in GIMP.

[DahBlount]

Nevermind, strange magic is afoot with the (failed) texture. I'm currently in the middle of learning how to use that Texture Atlas. I'll let you know how it goes.

[DahBlount]

Okay, so Texture Atlas does not work with parented sub objects. Whenever I try to unwrap it fuses them into one object which is not what I need.

[The Dagger]

When you hit "start manual unwrap" it will fuse all your objects but hitting "finish manual unwrap" will separate them again even with parented objects. It works well for me. However, do not start manual unwrap if some of the objects on the map are hidden... it'll probably crash blender.

[DahBlount]

Well crap. Thanks for letting me know. Big help. Lettuce see what happens now.

How does one AO Bake to the Atlas UV?

[The Dagger]

The easiest way is to bake the objects one by one. Just remember to uncheck the "Clear" case after the first one so you don't loose your progress. Another way to do it is to export everything by pieces and use GIMP or Photoshop.

[DahBlount]

So I would end the unwrap and then re select everything individually and Bake?