RedPhantom posted at 12:57PM Fri, 22 January 2021 - #4410874

Thanks for the suggestions. I'd forgotten about distance welding and I didn't know about selecting linked. Those helped a lot. I have it all set up as separate pieces now and I'm going to add new materials and UV maps.

Yes, it was a a 3ds file and was all tris. Tris to quads helped a lot with that. There are still some, but much less. I wouldn't have bothered if I'd found anything similar within my price range. One of these days, I'm going to have to learn to model because it's probably easier.

Glad you were able to get it to a useable condition. Those older .3ds models seem very handy at first glance, and very inexpensive. Typically you can find them in mass quantity for free these days. However, you can almost always expect the model will not set up for use in modern 3d environments and it may take a lot of effort to get it into working order. Most of the time, .3ds objects will import with triangulated faces, much like a STL file would, with randomly scattered parts and poor UV mapping. Split vertices and overlapping UVs are also very, very common due to the nature of the file format and the era that these models were created.

The Smart UV Project and/or "Project From View" options in the UV Editor can really help speed up the cleaning process for these models, but sometimes it's even easier to just model the thing again from scratch. Retopology could also be easier to do.

PS: If UV projection doesn't work well on some parts, try Box Mapping. It's not a perfect solution, but it can work on some shapes very quickly.

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