Topic: Multi Chan Hax, what I've been up to

It's been quite awhile, hasn't it? That's because I've been kind of off in several wild tangents lately. Been playing with more ideas for mixing 2d and 3d. Also been playing with various paramentrics, which is kind of working out.

One of my ideas for mixing 2d and 3d has actually worked out rather well. I actually managed to bring mapping channels into Photoshop. Kind of serendipituous considering certain announcements. Heh.

I was getting tired of doing certain things. In particular, going back and forth between 3DS Max and Photoshop when getting tricky with mapping channels. Set up the channels, do the material, bake things out, tweak some things, do another material with the tweaks, blah blah blah. Back and forth with a directory filling up with bakes really fast. Finally had enough of that.

So I did some messing around with drawing triangles. That was easy enough, but filling a triangle is a bit more difficult than I thought. I read up on scanning triangles and found a method that makes sense to me. Then I came up with a home-brew method of translating the texture between triangles. I eventually ended up with a way to move a bunch of triangles around and drag the texture along with them.

Then I read up on file I/O in MaxScript and FilterMeister (C/C++). That was a tangled mess, but I got it. With this last piece of file I/O, I was able to export sets of triangles (UVs) out of Max and get them into Photoshop. Basically, a way to switch between different sets of UV coords in Photoshop.

So, start in 3DS Max with a model. Slap on a bunch of mapping channels. Export the ones that I want to file. Then I can do all of those cool mapping channel things right in Photoshop.

Multi Chan Hax Head

Once I was done in Max, I did all that stuff right in Photoshop. I did not have to resort to materials and texture baking in Max one bit - all Photoshop.

Still a lot more work to do, but I'm terribly happy.