Category:Moviestorm Modding -> 3D Modeling -> Blender

Blender Texturing

This tutorial provides one basic way to apply textures to your Blender meshes.  This method will work with the Moviestorm exporter.
For a full reference, see the Blender Manual sections on UV Textures

1.) Select the mesh you are currently texture mapping and switch to edit mode.
2.) Split your 3D window, and set the new window type to ‘UV/Image Editor’.
3.) In the 3D window, select all (AKEY)
4.) Create your unwrap map (UKEY, and select Unwrap).  You should now see an outline of your texture map in the ‘UV/Image Editor’ window.  Don’t worry if it doesn’t look like you expect - you may have to give Blender some hints on how to unwrap.
Unwrap hints are called ‘Seams’.  Seams will cause the unwrap to cut the texture along the seams to better spread it over your texture.
5.) To create Seams, select the ‘edges’ you wish to make up your seams and access the ‘Edge Specials’ menu with the CTRL+EKEY and select ‘Mark Seams’.
You can also unwrap in stages - select just the faces you want to unwrap and perform step 4.
6.) Once you have unwrapped, you can tweak your map by selecting verts in the ‘UV/Image Editor’ window and moving (GKEY), sizing (SKEY), or rotating (RKEY) them.
7.) To export a UV map for texturing, make sure all your faces are selected in the 3D window, and in the UVs menu of the ‘UV/Image Editor’ window, select Scripts-> Save UV Face Layout…
8.) Once your texture is created to match your unwrap, switch to Shading Mode (F5).  In the Links and Pipeline Panel, click ‘Add New’ under Link to Object.
9.) Under the Texture tab that appears, click ‘Add New’.  Then Click on the ‘Map Input’ tab next to it and click the UV button in the 2nd row.
10.) Switch to ‘Texture Buttons’ (F6), and change the ‘Texture Type’ to Image.
11.) In the Image Panel, click the ‘Load’ button and select your texture.
12.) In the Menu of the ‘UV/Image Editor’ window, select your new image in the selection box (next to the ‘UVs’ menu).
13.) From here you can fine tune your texture by using image painting in the ‘UV/Image Editor’ window, or ‘Texture Paint’ mode in the 3D window.  Be sure to use the ‘UV/Image Editor’ window’s Image -> Save menu if you make changes.

WARNING: Blender can display DDS images, but I have had issues saving changes - my texture was corrupted.  I suggest using something else, like .png if you are going to edit the texture in Blender.