I want two (identical) objects on opposite sides of a model to have the same UV layout but different textures. To this end I textured one, froze the texture projections, duplicated it and scaled it by -1 on the x-axis. Then I expand the Explorer heirarchy and try to change the texture the duplicate uses. A popup asks if I want to make a local copy of "shared property(ies)". If I hit yes, nothing seems to happen. If I hit no, the window for changing the texture shows up, but the original object is also affected by the texture change. It's like the two are linked.

How can I break this link between them and let them have different textures but the same UVs?

How complex is the model and more importantly are you using clusters?
If you have clusters you need to apply to all the textures.

If there are no clusters find Scene material for the mesh in question and delete it, then apply a new texture.

The entire model is 2404 tris. I am using clusters. What do you mean by "apply to all the textures"? Apply what?

Apply the texture to all the clusters.
Expand Poygon Mesh in the heirarchy so you see all your clusters listed, select them all, do the aplly texture thing you tried in your orignal post and say yes as many times as it has pop up boxes for.

Or you could delete all the clusters and that would get rid of the individual cluster texture relationship and fall back to the scene material for the mesh.

things will get confusing relatively fast when you make a local copy of the material for a different texture. (especially when you have a complex model with many textures) your scene will be more clean at the end if you have one seperate material for each texture. so if you want to use a new texture, select the model, and through material -> phong apply a new material to it. you can assign the material/texture to other objects if you select them, choose material->assign and then click on the model that already uses the material.

Well, I clicked on the little purple sphere icon next to the material of the duplicated object, and when asked me if I wanted to make a local copy I hit yes. Then I could go in to phong and change the texture it used without affecting the other, original object. It seems to be working so far.

DarthD.U.C.K. wrote:things will get confusing relatively fast when you make a local copy of the material for a different texture. (especially when you have a complex model with many textures) your scene will be more clean at the end if you have one seperate material for each texture.

What exactly do you mean? It will make an unnecessarily large file? It won't export properly? It'll do something odd in-game?

no, nothing bad will happen, but if you make a local copy of a material the new texture you choose overrides the original texture (which is still the diffusetexture of the new material) through "color" rather than becoming the new diffusetexture. in my opinion everything is better organized if you have one material per texture, then you can easily switch textures or change their names etc.

Thanks, that worked perfectly!

I do have one more question about UV projections - though I'm afraid it's unrelated to this. Still, it's quick enough to not warrant a new thread, I think. If you've got polies that are connected on the model (no light blue disconnected edges or anything) but their not connected on the UV map, will light shining on the object in-game make an odd line along the UV break? I think it would, but I can't seem to find the thread where I think it was mentioned, and I don't have a working VM handy to try it out myself.

no, there is nothing wrong with having edges seperated in the UVs, they dont become hard/disconnected edges ingame as far as i experienced.