I did Myfist, thanks . Im still digesting them. I guess I'm justs hoping that someone has written a comprehensive ebook or something. I'm thinking of doing so once I learn all this stuff if there's enough interest. These texture sheets are driving me crazy. 

Take this for instance:

"A particular model can use up to 3 texture sheets with a naming convention as follows.

For example the Kol Battleship uses 3 textures. The primary color texture would be "CapitalTechBattleship-cl.dds".

So does that mean that I'm supposed to save the texture in that naming convention? It's implied but it isn't said emphatically, which to a total newbie is a very confusing. And do I load those files into Soft Image in a certain way? Awww so much to learn.

I havn't even started learning how the Sins filing system works but I surmise that it will be much simpler than this texture hell ( ). Awwww a good challenge is a good challenge...as long as I figure it out eventually. 

Other than the painting, a lot is covered in the PDFs for hooking up the sheets.

I made an online version so it can be updated as a lot of forge tools is badly out of date.

Thank you thank you thank you! You too fist..this is a great help. 

Wow..this tutorial is pretty useful too:

http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/tutorials/xsi/noesis_xsi/painting.html

It was in my bookmarks. Someone from here  posted it origionally but I don't know who, sorry. When I find out I'll give credit here. 

This is really cool...my pen tablet tells it how much pressure to apply. 

Thanks for the link. that looks like an interesting site.

Here's a couple of sites I have found helpful in the past, if you don't already know of them.

http://www.xsibase.com/

http://area.autodesk.com/tutorials-tips

Yes, so long as your polygon is bigger than a pixel. Not sure what you mean by group in a polygon, but you can overlap i.e. you can have several polygons using the same texture location.

Another good point to remember is to give your polygons or Islands some padding, ie extend the textures a few pixels beyond the the boundary of you polygons or Islands. This will make sure you model is completely textured.

 And yes! Doing the UV's and tangents is the most time consuming and personally I found hardest to get my head around in the modelling process with SoftImage. I have been learning a 3D texturing program recently that may eliminate all that part of modelling called "3D Coat". It has a feature in it called "Ptex" that does all the UV's & tangents automatically and is also completely seamless. I haven't tried exporting a model to SoftImage yet, but it certainly seems like a promising thing. 3D Coat also allows you to paint straight onto the model in 3D space like other programs like Z-Brush and Mudbox.

I see so you are importing a texture to layer and it covers the whole canvas yes?

here is a stamp of the UV layout of the Vasari capital I made for my mod. I selected each polygon or polygon group if they are joined and close to, if not parallel. Then gave each a sub- projection and manipulated it so the projection is at 90 degrees to the polygons. Or if you look at the projection as a plane parallel to it. The projections can be manipulated in normal 3D space by selecting them as objects and then just using the normal transform tools. Then in the editor scale them to desired size and heal them to Islands where possible so as not to distort their proportions too much. You can make some fine tuning adjustments to their proportions by selecting the points and manipulating them within the editor with the normal transform tools after.

I usually put all the islands outside of the texture until I have all the projections done, then pack them in to the texture map so I can scale them as big as possible to allow more detail.

You can, as I have done here make a half model, do all the UV's, attach all the textures and then symmetrise your model, and SoftImage will symmetrise all the texture also. Great for fitting in all those details. Your model does need to be symmetrical though. And the tangents will still need to be done to the symmetrised half.

You should be able to select the polygons that you want the texture on only and press "paste into" If you are using Photoshop

Weight maps I thought were for manipulating the mesh on your model in a way that is difficult to do with normal transform tools, much like sculpting. I haven't used them so I could be wrong in that they arn't used for texturing though.

Oh, but make sure you rename  your weight maps so you know which is which later .   This Federation model is almost done now. 

Sweeeet....that's so cool. I finally got a UV stamped and opened in photoshop. . Thanks a lot. 

Hey guys...I hit my next hurtle. When I click on Convertxsi.exe it loads the doss screen and then immediatly crashes. Am I supposed to extract it to a certain folder? Thanks a lot. 

ConvertXSI is a command line tool (in other words DOS). Though Harpos mod tools are useful, i like to do things "the hard way". I create a folder in my c drive called "Convert" then extract convertxsi with all of its dlls there. then i save my dotxsi's in that folder as well (xsi will also export the textures there as well).

The "Hard Way"

Create a folder in your C drive called "Convert". Then extract ConvertXSI, and its associated .dll files from the forge tools into the Convert folder. Export your model in .xsi format to the Convert folder. Any associated textures will be saved there as well. Then follow these steps.

Open your Command Prompt (found in Start menu\Accessories). Then type in the prompt cd\Convert. Then press enter. You should see C:\Convert in the next line.

Next type convertxsi C:\Convert\"yourshipname".xsi  C:\Convert\"yourshipname".mesh then press enter. "yourshipname" is whatever the name of your model is. If nothing is wrong with the mesh you should see a list of materials, and mesh nulls found. Then a bounding radius. Plus points after optimization. You can use the -nooptimize modifier if you dont want the mesh optimized. You will see an error message if there is something wrong with your mesh. When you are done there should be a .mesh file along with its textures waiting inside your Convert folder to be placed in your mods mesh, and textures folder.

Or you can just download harpos mod tools, and follow his instructions. I do it the hard way because i have more control over the outcome.