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18. Re-grouping the belt for texture mapping

Now the shape of the belt is done. I just need to texture map it.
I select all, assign my sqaured texture and open the texture coordinate editor. I need to find an empty space on the texture that has not been used before to draw a belt on.
Now I can map this different ways. I can either map each ring on the same small piece of texture. That way all the rings will look the same and the belt texture will not take up much space on the bitmap. Or I can map the whole belt on a longer piece of texture, so each part of the belt uses it's own texture. This will allow for skinners to be more creative when skinning the belt, so that is what I'll do.
As I can only see one group at a time in the texture coordinate editor I'll regroup all the front rings into one group and regroup the back rings into one group too.
First I choose Edit ->select none from the menu, then I select all front rings from the groups tab. As the copied side is one group only I will have to select those rings by hand with the select tool set to faces (add to a selection: shift+click/drag. Remove from a selection: shift+rightclick/drag).
Hide the body while you're doing this, that makes it easier to see.
Then I press regroup and rename the new group from Regroup1 to Front Belt. I then select the remaining rings from the group tab tab, press regroup and rename the group Back Belt.
I assign the texture to the two new groups, select all and go back to the texture coordinate editor.

Note: regrouping is the key to making good texture mapping in Milkshape. If you look at the way the maxis bodies are texture mapped you can see the front of the body is mapped as one group, the back of the body is another group and the left and the right arm make up another two groups. You can do the same when texture mapping new shapes, especially larger ones that look silly with the standard Milkshape mapping.

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