Ok, i just got LW 9.6 and I'm looking for some advice from experienced users of both LW and Unity. I'm fairly new to both.
Ideally, I would like to build a level in LW, with each object mapped and textured, and import it into Unity with its textures intact.
1) what is the best format to export to from LW that would maintain my textures
2) should all layers be merged before export?
3) what scale should everything be set to in LW so that my imported objects are neither ginormous nor microscopic (and quite how do u set that up in LW)?
4) is it best to create an entire level in LW as 1 file or best to make it in chunks?
1) FBX. Not needed, but for auto-applying the textures in the Unity project, make sure to place all your textures in a "textures" subfolder of where you've placed the FBX file. I recommend using windows explorer / finder for that, while Unity is running in the background.
2) Not needed, though it might be best for organization purposes. Just as when you open your LWO in Lightwave Layout, every layer is converted into an independently selectable object. Obviously if your destination platform is the iPhone, you're best having the least possible independent meshes, since each of those demand a single draw call, and too many draw calls kill the iphone performance.
3) I recommend using 1m scale (1 unit = 1 meter) in Lightwave and leaving the FBX export (x100) and Unity import scale factor (0.01) alone. Might seem weird but that's the "expected" workflow, thus it prevents problems especially for mesh skin deformations.
4) Only create more than one file when you'll use tile-able/rearrange-able parts in your game, or if a full object would be really huge.
One last tip: To have your UVs exported to FBX, make sure ALL of them assigned to one or more materials before exporting. That can be as simple as selecting each UV for a different diffuse texture layer, you don't even need to assign any image to the texture, only the UV is important. If you don't take that step LW will simply fail to export the UVs. Okay?