Unwrapping/Editing multiple objects in Blender

Question

I have a bunch a tanks in blender, each with a base and at least one weapon (well, there's one with no weapons at all). Every base and weapon is a separate object, so they can turn independently in my game. Though now I want to unwrap them, all on a single texture (for performance reasons.) Though I can't seem to unwrap/edit more than one at a time. This is very annoying since you can't see the uv space of the other tanks, which makes unwrapping a pain.

I googled a bit, and the only solution I could find was to make them all into one mesh, then unwrap and then split them up again. Though I spend some time getting their pivot-points correct and I don't want to do that again. So, is there any other way? Maybe just unwrapping one, but seeing all the other objects their uv's would be good too.

Note: I'm still pretty new to blender, used to work in max, I'm getting the hang of modelling, though this is the first time I'm unwrapping stuff, though seems straight forward :P

Thanks!

Answer 1

There is another way of doing this if all objects look the same. If all of them share the same Mesh you can simply unwrap this Mesh to your Texture. To Link the Object Data of the tanks select all of them at once and press Ctrl+L then select Object Data. Your tanks should now share the same Mesh. Any changes you do to this Mesh will be visible on all linked objects.