UV Mapping on Linked Sets?

Just a Noob Question:-

Can I apply a single UV Map texture to an entire linked set?

You can, but you'll need to set the repeats and offsets for each face of the linkset in order to isolate the specific part of the texture you want each to show. Think of it kind of like UV mapping in reverse. Chop up your texture canvas first, and then adjust the settings on the prim faces to match. Make sense?

Perhaps an illustration would be more conducive:-

Say I have created a two-prim model in Blender using Prim.Blender (available somewhere on this site). I import the exported model into SL. In Blender I use the UV unwrap feature to unwrap the model cylindrically. Then I edit the unwrapped texture map using UV Mapper. Now, my question is, can I import that map into SL as a *SINGLE* texture and apply it to my linked model? If that is possible, how do I go about doing it?

As I said, take your *SINGLE* texture, apply it to all the prims, and then adjust the repeats and offsets on each face of each prim to show just the appropriate part of the texture for that specific face. If you don't know how to adjust one face at a time, here's how. Turn on Select Texture in the editor, and then click on the face you want to affect. If you want to affect more than one face at a time, shift click them to add to the selection.

To stick with your 2-prim example, let's say it's two cubes. Each cube has six faces, right? Well, then your texture is gonna need to have 12 panels on it. Set up your canvas with a perfect UV space, so each panel occupies exactly 1/12 of the canvas. A logical configuration for this would be a 4x3 panel grid. Divvy up your UV canvas into that configuration, and bake your texture to it.

Now, in SL, set the repeats on each face of your two cubes to 0.25 x 0.333. That will put 1/12 of the canvas on each one. Adjust the offsets accordingly so that each face shows one full panel (.125 x .333, .125 x 0, .125 x -.333, etc.). Do this for all 12 faces.

Congratulations, you've just done the "UV mapping in reverse" I was talking about.

Got it now?

Chosen is right, as usual...

however, seems to me like there ought to be some way to automate this, either in some sort of external tool, or inside SL itself...

lots of things we do the hard, maual way now that ought to be automatable.

There is if you're building and texturing in an external app that supports both multiple UV channels per object and texture baking. Have one channel set up on each prim with the same UV mapping that exists in SL, and in the second channel, use UV mapping set up however you like. Texture the objects using channel two, then bake the texture of each surface out to channel one. Viola.