UV unwrapping: 2 newb questions

[Groot]

Hiya,

I'm using Max 9, and I'm pretty new to it. A couple UV questions:

1. I have built a small model with about six parts. I've linked them together using the Select & Link tool. I have no materials on anything. When I try to unwrap the whole model, I can only unwrap one object at a time. If I try grouping the parts into one group, then UVW Unwrapping doesn't work at all. Converting to an editable poly doesn't work either. How should I glue my model together in such a way that I can still unwrap it?

2. Once I have something I can unwrap, I don't seem to get full use of the unwrap controls. I select face; but whether I choose cylindrical or planar unwrapping, the result is always the same. In fact, I get no result at all in the Edit-UV window until I take the further step of selecting one of the 3 options: Flatten Unmapping, Normal Unmapping, Unfold Unmapping. Whichever I choose, my choice of cylindrical/planar/pelt/whatever in the rollout has absolutely no effect. In fact, none of the buttons on the rollout seem to do anything except highlight the viewport in different ways. What am I missing?

[Trex2001]

1. If u need your objects linked together for animation reasons, try the following:
-unlink them
-assuming one of your obj is an editable poly, select it, hit attach and attach the other five parts.
-now apply uw unwrap doing your uv layout.
-collapse the modifier stack
now in element sub-object mode of the ed. poly select one piece at a time and detach
-u should now have 6 pieces again with the same uv layout (of course just the part)
-setup pivot points (u loose them in step 2) again and do ur linking...
2. make sure u not only go into face sub-object mode but also actually select the faces u want to map. If u want to map the whole object at once, apply uv map, choose your mapping, and then aplly uv unwrap after that

hope it makes sense somehow and helps. also, as always,m make sure to check the tuts that ship with max and take a look at 3dtotal.com

[Groot]

Thank you very much for that helpful answer. That cleared up some of my confusion. I, um, was forgetting to select any polygons when I was trying to UV Unwrap. And following your attachment instructions, I was able to generate a giant unwrap of the whole model. I can also use the flatten command to generate an unwrap of the model into lots of clusters, which is close to what I want.

What I'm most interested in doing, though, is generating a single texture map of the model, but piece-by-piece. I have a model of a spaceship. I want to unwrap the engine to the map; then click select the cockpit, and add that to the same texture map. I've seen a video tutorial of a guy doing this. He seemed to do it by assigning material IDs to each component of the model first. His model appeared to be grouped or linked as one whole (and I'm still confused about what the best way to "unify" the model is for export), but he was able to pull out parts of it and map them one at a time. How do I do that?