Multiple Vertices for UV Coords

[SpiderPig]

Maybe I've missed something, but I've made a blender exporter that removes all double vertices of the mesh.  So there are 590 vertices in the mesh.  But by doing so, there are several areas where the UV coords are off because of the way the model is unwrapped.

Here you can see the texture's are compressed / stretched in certain places.  More noticeably on the stump.  This is because the cylinder is unwrapped and stretched across an image, so the same vertex can have multiple UV Coords.

Here's how it's unwrapped in blender.

The only way I can correct it is to double the vertices where the UV Coords are different.  But of course, I get lots more vertices.

It seems a shame to create so many extra vertices just to get the UV Coords working correctly.  But, it is what it is.

I've never noticed it before but all models that have UV coords must have many extra vertices just to get the unique UV coords.  Unless there is something I've missed and there is a way to use the second UV Coord set?  I don't see how though, as the shaders would have no way of identify which coord set it should be using.

The only way to reduce vertex count would be to create a better UV map that has faces joined together as much as possible.

[Josh]

31 minutes ago, SpiderPig said:

The only way I can correct it is to double the vertices where the UV Coords are different.  But of course, I get lots more vertices.

I've never noticed it before but all models that have UV coords must have many extra vertices just to get the unique UV coords.  Unless there is something I've missed 

This is correct. This is a common behavior in almost all game model formats. You are doing it correctly.

32 minutes ago, SpiderPig said:

there is a way to use the second UV Coord set?

The second UV set is available in the .zw coordinates of the texcoord value.