A tip for everyone who models: Baking an ambient occlusion map is a good way of testing for geometry errors.Do this
BEFORE uv-mapping,
OR use the existing uv maps and save a backup of your base texture.
1. First, what I did is autouv in Wings3D using projection normal to determine segments and projection normal to unwrap.
2. Then I exported it (3ds, in my case) and opened it in Blender.
3. Next, I baked an ambient occlusion map (the texture must exist and must be decent resolution, in my case for a ~10k asteroid model it was 2048x2048)
4. Then, I saved the texture.
5. Open it up in your modeling program of choice.
6. Here is what to look for:
- Black spots (these are geometry errors)
- Other miscolored spots (these are often uv overlaps)
NOTE: this only applies to models that don't have really deep holes in them... I imagine the HTL GTD Titan, seen in Blue Planet, would get pretty dark ambient occlusion maps inside the fighterbays.