Ok, figured out why the white spots showed...in the little globe thingie of the texture file, one of the 4 spots is white, that was the blank spot. BUT, I'm still having a problem here. Some spots will be textured, but won't take the whole texture - just the background colour. The only exception to that is if I click the little spheremap button, then it textures everywhere, but it's all circled, so it's kind of ugly...how do I get the ordinary one to work? Please?

http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i145/ ... ship-1.jpg

If you used 3DS Max (or GMAX or maybe other programs) to create the model, you may try experimenting with "UV mapping" (or something like that) to move your textures. I know that it's in 3DS, maybe in GMAX. Don't know about others...

gmax is easier..slightly...and its free...

Well, this was done with MS3D, I can use 3ds max, figured that doing it straight in Milkshape would be easier...

The sides of your model haven't been Mapped properly, when you Tile Map (ctrl+T in ms) you need to map the Top, Bottom & sides seperately. The way you've mapped it the sides are literaly just using one or two pixels of the texture.

**shuffles of with a new headache**

Once in a while, depending on the texture...I've gotten pretty lucky mapping a few of them on multiple surfaces in one shot.
I can't explain how it worked, but MS seems to map textures out perfectly in some rare cases. (but they were rare cases).
But mostly..it's better to individually map out sections as separate groups. Once all the mapping is accomplished...before exporting the cmp & mat file..I go back over the groups and "regrouped" those items that shared the same texture.
It simplified the file size and held their coordinates fine as long as I didn't attempt to "remap" the new group.

Magnet had it right. UV MApping is the way to go. Lithium Unwrapper and UV Unwrapper work from what I've been told. I prefer using the UV Mapper in my modelling prog. GMAX and 3D Blender both have the feature, GMAX can still be found free for older versions, 3D Blender is free and has very recent versions.

Modelling/Texturing is like riding a bike, then adding wings, rockets, and that funny pinwheel thing. While not impossible, it does take alot of practice to get it right.

@ Rankor, how you group your model is all down to what you want to achieve with it, if your happy with a single component (ROOT) CMP with no destructables, and a resized vanilla SUR then carry on. But if you want to stand out from the masses then think multiple components, we've had a CMP exporter that can do them for quite sometime now, it just needs the model to have multiple groups and arranged properly in the group list to work. Add damage models and custon SURs and you'll have a ship that works as close to a vanilla ship as we can get ATM.

@ Rest, When modelling you use the methods that your skill levels and desires allow.

Milkshape is ideal for modeling game content and about average for difficulty of use, gmax & blender are free but they like most of the "big programs" are complicated to use with more features than you'll ever use for game content.

Texture mapping for games depends on your abilities with a paint program, Tile Mapping doesn't need any abilities as you can use other peoples tile textures, or your own primative textures for your model. UV Mapping requires a high degree of artistic skill for game content textures as all of the detail is added to the texture instead of the model.

For game content I stick to milkshape and it's texture coordinates editor (Ctrl+T, don't use the tile mapper under tools as that can give weird results), non game content (Poser etc) I use MAX and/or Lightwave and either Lith or Classic for mapping, my lack of abilities with photoshop still allow me to make damn good textures for bodies and clothes.

**shuffles of with a new headache**