i could reproduce the crash now! try to delete the default cube before you work with your imported object. then it doesn't seem to happen anymore! [ctrl+click] somehow seems to wrongly pick the cube although it shouldn't. i will file a bug report.

but you have to use [shift+click] in uv/face select mode anyway!

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[file -> save default settings] saves your default settings (but also the scene so maybe do it with an empty or the default scene).

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yeah, some things are a bit quirky in blender. some of the behaviour can get changed in the preferences and to some things you would get used to quickly. for the next version they plan to do a complete event system overhaul so you will be able to customize all key bindings.

Now that I've resolved this crash issue, I'm now trying to figure out how to apply a UV map to it, a top mapping in my case. I've figured out how to add a texture file, one of my old BMP files. I've searched for a way to create a UV map and there doesn't seem to be a way of doing it, at least from what I've seen.

with your faces selected press "u". experiment with what option works best for you. make sure you are in top view if you want to project from top.

I've used every option and nothing is appearing. If it was working, I'd see the object as green, not white. By the time I could have this solved with Blender, I could've already manually processed about 150 to 200 skin vertices using my only known method - punching a lot of numbers into calculator and manually setting skin vertices one by one in MED's skin edittor. It's still nothing compared to 2000+ for hundreds of models.

do you have an uv/image editor window open too so that you see what you are doing? and are you sure that you have applied the image correctly?

sure it takes you longer now but once you have figured it out you very likely will be a lot faster with blender.

No, I don't have a UV/image edittor window open as I don't know where it is. This user-interface is much more confusing than that of MED. This is what I'm doing:

Screenshot #1 - I select the faces using the shift key to select them. Having noticed the top view was on "user" instead of "top" as I expected it to be, I set the view mode as needed.

Screenshot #2 - After having it selected to top, I place the mouse cursor in the top view and press the U key as you told me to. A menu comes up. The option I choose is the one highlighted. I've tried the others without success.

Screenshot #3 - Upon creating the UV maps (supposedly), and pressing the A key to have nothing selected, I get this, no texture or anything. I checked to make sure it was in textured mode and that isn't the issue. It appears as if the UV map didn't get created at all.

Screenshot #4 - As a guide, this is what it should be, as from in MED.

It took me about 20 minutes to texture it properly because of the faulty design of MED awkwardly stretching everything. That's why I'm looking for other alternatives to the UV map creation. I do this, in MED, in order to do what I'm after (after creating the UV map):

1. I first select one of the vertices, usually in a north-south, top-bottom, or west-east direction in order.
2. I next take note of the position of that vertex. Depending on the view, the positions I take vary some. For a top view, as I've been after, I take the X position and copy the whole thing.
3. I take out calculator and paste this number into it and multiply by 4, the texture scale I want (which simulates 0.25 in WED).
4. I copy the result I got in calculator and paste it to the X position of the skin vertex.
5. I repeat steps 2 through 4 for the Y position.
6. I repeat steps 1 through 5 for each vertex in the skin mapping until everything is done.

In a good run, I could do 3 or 4 vertices per minute, not much on this model. But, for landscapes and things with 2000+ vertices, it's a real nightmare to use this method.

sorry, i don't quite get your med workflow description otherwise i could do a short blender video tutorial for you.

you could upload the final textured med object. maybe i can figure out what you want to do by looking at your uv-map.

I've explained it very well in my feature request here.

Picture adding a block in WED and texturing it. By default, the texture scale is 1. If I drop it down to 0.25, it simulates exactly what I'm after with models. Look at the screenshots in this example to help understand. To give some examples:

1. I have a model that is 16x16 quants and a single skin of the size 1024x1024. When I select this and if it's the only thing there, the area the skin vertices spans is the entire 1024x1024 texture space and it looks so fine, there's no meaning in using it. If it was a series of 16x16-quant squares in a 2x2 grid with only one selected, the skin vertices would then span 512x512 in the corner of the square I selected. If I have a part of a model far out (like 16384 quants) and I'm trying to texture a 16x16-quant area, the area covered on the skin map would be so small, you'd have to zoom in to at least 4x (and even there it's very tight) in order to reliably manipulate it.
2. Now let's say I have a model that is 4096x4096 quants in a square with a texture size of only 64x64. When I create the UV map, the texels are just downright huge (as if setting the texture scale on a WED block to 64!). No matter how it is adjusted, the entire texture area is used without any overlap. If I raised the size of the texture to 256x256, it'd use a 256x256 area instead giving a 16x texture scale (still huge). If I used a 16384x16384-quant model square on a 64x64 texture, it'd still use the 64x64 size making a WED texture scale equivelent of 256. Imagine seeing each texture pixel as 256 quants. It doesn't even look like anything usable. Now, if I moved the skin vertices to 4096x4096, the size of the original model, the texture would tile 64 times and would look like WED's texture scale of 1. In my case, what I'm after, would be moving them to 16384x16384 to get the 0.25 scale (WED equivelent) which would look very fine and is what I'm after. The further apart the skin vertices are, the finer the texture appears. The spring as shown in the 4th screenshot in my most recent reply above uses this 0.25 texture scale. If a vertex was at (8, 8), I'd place the skin vertex at (32, 32) and otherwise just multiply everything by the same scale factor. With odd positions, like 3.2894417, this is where I need to use calculator.

Why can't I just use the scale tool? It's very inaccurate and doesn't scale properly (and when things are stitched together, there is a noticable texture misalignment.

The concept is easy to use - just multiply the positions of the vertices as per the mapping type for placing the skin vertices. Someone else gave me a small plug-in that otherwise does this, but skin vertices aren't affected at all, but the actual model's mesh is (which is helpful). It's the default system for positioning the skin vertices that's the problem - it scales covering the area of the model to the area of where the object is placed and it causes very strange values to occur in very unusual ways and the scaling is set on each axis rather than being proportional causing odd distortions. I don't know if the user who gave me that would mind me posting it as a reference for manipulating the skin vertices. It seems as if the SDK doesn't even allow that and it only seems to apply to that of the 6.31 version.

in blender you can easily scale the uvs by entering a precise number. there also are various ways to do mappings which prevent distortions. if i understand you correctly this is what you are after?

if you upload the spring example with final uv-map i can show you how to achieve the same mapping in blender.

I can prevent the starting distortions by using a square-shaped area set to a power of 2 (that's what that odd square-shaped thing is in my sample - it's to keep things proportional, but still, it doesn't go any larger than the actual texture area initially. With this set proportionally, I can simply move the skin vertices to the top left corner so nothing is below 0, but at least one vertex on each axis is equal to 0 and from there, I'd just multiply the skin vertex positions by a set scale, which, due to MED always having it within the texture, would be a power of 2 so I get the 4x multiplier factor. To prevent the odd positioning thing, I have to create a group. Since MED has a bug in it in that I can't build faces if the vertices used to make the face with spans multiple groups (I've reported this since 6.40.2 was out and it hasn't been fixed yet along with a host of other bugs in MED that I've reported and haven't been fixed (want me to name some of them?)) To work around this, I have to select all groups and merge them (and MED has crashed twice upon doing so already)).

Anyway, here's that spring sample: Download - 3 KB ZIP file. Because the spring itself is 16x16 quants on the top view, a 64x64 texture would cover the entire thing quite well and with both being a power of 2, it's much easier. Let's say I wanted a 2x texture scale instead of this 4x texture scale. For this, I'd just divide each skin vertex's position by 2 to get it.

Edit: springgreen.zip, not greenspring.zip