How do I texture a Seperated Mesh as its own texture?

Question

I selected part of an existing object, duplicated it, and pressed P to separate this new mesh, by selection. But now I am not able to texture this new object separately -- whichever of the two gets textured, the other one changes to that same texture. Obviously, these are not SEPARATE objects. What do I need to do to ACTUALLY separate this new object, so it can be also TEXTURED separately?

Answer 1

Apparently, there were TWO of the second object. Removing doubles didn't correct this, so I was stuck. I simply deleted one in Object Mode. Now both objects have separate materials. Weird!

Answer 2

To work with blender you have to understand data blocks. They are explain really well in this video here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJAs7QjalTg

Basically when you duplicate an object it's material is not duplicated from the initial object. Rather it's an instance. Meaning the Second duplicated object is using the same material from the first. You will need to make a new material or make a duplicate of the first material by hitting the "+" sign in the material properties panel list.

Shown here.

What the button does is create a new material by copying the first material. You will also notice that a new name is given to the material ... eg. material would now be renamed "material.001"