Importing mesh with several elements

Chielvl

Hello.

I am currently working on a schoolproject, for which we're making a game. In this game there's a gun, what I'm currently modeling. I made this gun(see vid below), which uses separate parts. The entire bolt action system contains several elements, because I need to animate that. Now I need to texture it. Here is my problem. If I import it in UDK, it suddenly is one element. Therefore it needs only one texture. How should I solve this problem?

Is it possible to make a gun animation consisting of multiple meshes?

I am familiar with the importing, I know all the extentions that need to be used, how to make a material in UDK and stuff.

I use 3Ds Max for the modelling

I use Photoshop for the texture

I use UDK ofcourse to import the shit.

Vid: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv_bxL0PDFk"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv_bxL0PDFk[/ame]

tristamus

If you have multiple materials applied to the separate mesh pieces in Max / Maya / Whatever, then when you import it into UDK, under the LOD's in the static mesh's properties, you should see multiple slots open. How many slots there are should correspond to how many different materials you applied to the gun in your 3d package (max?)

So, in UDK, you don't have to use just one texture - you use multiple materials that have separate textures. I think that's pretty inefficient though...

Why don't you just have one material in max, then when you bring it into UDK, there will be one slot for you to plug in one material?

Basically, if you want one mesh to have multiple materials, you need to assign different materials to it FIRST IN YOUR 3D PACKAGE, and then when you import to UDK, it sees that and you can go from there.

Am I understanding you correctly?

Chielvl

Yes, you understand me correctly. However, today I heard an awesome alternative, which makes the whole thing way easier.

It appears you can animate elements. Of this I was not aware, so I used the several meshes method, which works perfectly. If I unwrap all these elements separately, and then collapse them to an editable poly, I can later on combine those unwraps, when using the UWV Unwrap modifier on the whole thing. This reduces the hassle the unwrap gave me before to a minimum, makes the whole thing one mesh, and makes the several materials method obsolete.

Thanks to my teacher for this method. And thanks to you for this insight. Maybe I'll be using this method for some other meshes, but not this one.