Poly textures, one file or many?
 

When texturing a poly mesh, do I need to have all the textures for the whole mesh in a single image file or is it possible to texture one area of the mesh with one image file and place a different image file for another part of the poly mesh?

For example have a file called front.tga and back.tga or should I map them together into one large file? Thanks.

Depends on th model mate... Most of the time one will do..

If you want, select all of the faces of your 'front' and apply the front shader. And the same for the back.

Only game models are really limited as to the number of textures and size of textures you can use