UV map for a model that has separate components

Question

Just starting to get into grouping and UV maps. I am using Maya LT, Substance Painter (Learning this one) and Unity 3D. The end goal is to have an object similar to this in Unity, where the handle can pull, the spinner can spin and the animal flap can rotate 180. All of this I know how to do, my question is how to do the grouping and UV's correctly.

It is one model, made up of four components (Three moving ones), should I have one material and uv map for the entire group? I am not sure how this works, as the final model will be a group of the 4 components. Or should I unwrap each component and give each its own material? Lastly, given the latter scenario, is there a way to unwrap each component individually, but have the object share the same material? Sorry if this is a basic question, but where as the model is not static and has moving components, I just want to nail down the correct way to go about it before I start myself down an incorrect path. Thanks in advanced for any help!

Answer 1

So, yeah you can have it all in separate component and even use same material, just space your UVs accordingly and apply the material with your base color metallic roughness and so on. But here you trading off your resolution by having so many components occupying same UV space. Another work around would be to use painter in order to bake material masks and then use shader graph in unity to actually texture your model, this way you not limited in resolution anymore cause you have direct access to tiling and texture scaling and so on..

Answer 2

Use UDIMs, put it all in one material, make sure that the handle pull and flap rotation are all happening without ploys being distorted and you should be fine in Unity: export as .fbx, or use the Unity integration plugin.