Merging Objects

[Whilyam]

I've noticed that the UV mapping splits an object made up of several smaller merged objects along their original fault lines. Is there any way for Blender to treat separate objects as a unified object in the eyes of UV mapping?

[Robert The Rebuilder]

Is there any way for Blender to treat separate objects as a unified object in the eyes of UV mapping?

Using the "Project From View" option, perhaps?

[Whilyam]

Yeah, that'll do it, but I mean when you do "unwrap"

[Jojon]

If you mean joined meshes; select all the vertices along the seam (or all vertices in the mesh, if you have none that are separated on purpose [e.g. for hard edge shading]) and press "w", to bring up the "specials" menu. Pick "remove doubles", to auto-merge all vertices sharing the same position.

[Nadnerb]

if you have a contiguous object that you want to map, and you know where you want it to split the edges on the mesh, you can select an edge(s), and use Ctrl-E > Mark Seam to mark seam for the Unwrap function to split on. (The 'seam' will then be highlighted in orange in edit mode)

[Whilyam]

Except I have the opposite. I have an object I built (by way of the snap-to tool) out of a number of smaller meshes (all consolidated into the same object) and I'd like to unify it so I can do something like "unwrap" the piece as a single structure.

[Nadnerb]

well, in that case, just do what jojon said, and select all of the verts, ([a]) press [w] and select "remove doubles". Any verts that are in the same location as any other verts will be merged.

[Whilyam]

Excellent, that works great! Thanks!