[kapuhy]

Originally Posted by gap

For your small ship models, did you adopt secondary UV channel and, if so, which steps did you follow?

Step by step, my workflow is:

1) Model the ship and UV-map it for diffuse texture
2) Paint the diffuse texture
3) Merge objects I have into "final" objects that will be exported into game
4) Create second UV channel (yes, Blender does have the option) and make it UV-map for AO texture
5) Bake AO texture on this second uv-channel
6) Export objects into GR2 editor

I never had any problem with vertex order this way.

Originally Posted by gap

As far as you know, is Blender capable of importing two or more UV maps from two identical (except for UV coordinates) obj files?

Now, with import I honestly don't know. Only ship I had to import from game was Armed Trawler I was disarming, and I didn't even bother importing second uv map - I simply baked a new AO map for modified ship and exported it to replace the old.

Originally Posted by gap

Is it possible to preview the blending of the two textures connected with each UV map directly in Blender?

Maybe, but again - I never had the need to do it so I don't know.

Originally Posted by gap

When you choose to export the model as an obj file, can you choose which one of the UV maps will be exported on file?

Yes. In Blender, one of UV maps assigned to selected object is always set as active, and it will be used for obj export. So you export object Whatever.obj, switch to second uv map, and export again changing filename to Whatever_AO.obj.

EDIT: Also regarding uv-mapping in Blender - I use 2.78, which doesn't have the option to see/edit uv map for multiple objects together, but there's an addon called Multiple UV Maps Editing which allows to do just that. In 2.80 from what I hear the option is already added.