How do I get a Model to add a name to it's Texture(s) in the XNA Content Pipeline

Question

I know that a texture's name is not preserved when it's loaded in. I also know that you can give it a name. For example:

Texture2D texture = content.Load<Texture2D>("MyTexture");
texture.Name = "MyTexture"; //Or whatever else you want to call it

However, what about when you load a model? It automatically loads in the right texture for each ModelMeshPart, and drops the Name (no idea why though). This is fine, right up until the point where you actually want to identify which texture that ModelMeshPart is using. I found someone else having the same problem here. Shawn Hargreaves gave this solution:

If you need access to this data at runtime, you will need to extend the pipeline to store it somewhere else. For instance you could use a custom processor to store texture filenames in the ModelMeshPart.Tag property

I figured that was easy enough. Yeah...feel free to point and laugh. I got as far as creating a custom proccessor class and inheriting the standard ModelProcessor before I realised that I didn't know exactly where the ModelMeshPart's texture was stored and I've spent the past few days trying to find out.

I just want to preserve each part's texture name so that I can do something like

Model model = content.Load<Model>("MyModel");
BasicEffect effect = (BasicEffect)model.Meshes[0].MeshParts[0].Effect;
string texName = effect.Texture.Name;

Also Merry Christmas.

EDIT

For the record, I'm importing a .x model.

Answer 1

The best approach in my opinion is to store all texture references in the ModelMeshPart.Tag property like Shawn Hargreaves suggested. If you do it this way, you can decide which texture names you need in your game.

In order to achieve this, you need a custom model processor. The filename for each texture referenced in the MeshPart is stored in MeshPart.Material.Textures. So a simple approach to just save all texture filenames for later use would look like this:

using System.Collections.Generic;
using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline;
using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline.Graphics;
using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline.Processors;

namespace ModelTextureNameExtension
{
    [ContentProcessor(DisplayName = "Model with texture names")]
    public class ModelTextureNameProcessor : ModelProcessor
    {
        public override ModelContent Process(NodeContent input, ContentProcessorContext context)
        {
            ModelContent modelContent = base.Process(input, context);

            StoreTextureFilenameInTag(modelContent);

            return modelContent;
        }

        private void StoreTextureFilenameInTag(ModelContent modelContent)
        {
            Dictionary<string, string> textureDictionary = new Dictionary<string, string>();

            foreach (var mesh in modelContent.Meshes)
            {
                foreach (var meshPart in mesh.MeshParts)
                {
                    foreach (var textureEntry in meshPart.Material.Textures)
                    {
                        textureDictionary.Add(textureEntry.Key, textureEntry.Value.Filename);
                    }

                    meshPart.Tag = textureDictionary;
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

When you import a model with this processor, you can access the extracted data in your game like this:

Model model = Content.Load<Model>("Models/MyModel");

foreach (var mesh in model.Meshes)
{
    foreach (var meshPart in mesh.MeshParts)
    {
        Dictionary<string, string> textureDictionary = meshPart.Tag as Dictionary<string, string>;

        // Use the filename of the texture you need
    }
}

Please note that the number of referenced textures strongly depends on the model you import. You can adjust the content processor to your needs if you know which texture you exactly need.

textureEntry.Value.Name is always (at least when I tried to use it) null, so you need to fetch the texture name from the file name. You could also use the name of the material in the mode file which is stored in MeshPart.Material.Name.