uv nightmare + texture baking

I heard that the UV mapping from other programs should translate into SL well. I am trying to bake textures from 3ds max 6 but for some reason the tga file I import into SL wont line up most of the time. I am not sure if I am doing something wrong with 3ds max or SL. Normally when you just render to texure you get a bitmap with different faces of the texture split up over the bitmap, with dark spaces in between. I tried to add a uvw unwrap modifier and it flattened out the map so it should be able to just map over well in SL, but the box wont map at all (renders black), the cylinder maps the sides well but not the top and bottom, the sphere won't line up well even though it looked promising, a tourus maps great go figure. I can map the box the normal way with the map broken up in different parts and go into SL and map each face of a box, rotate the texture and tile it the right amount but it is time consuming. I think I can map a sculptie since the template I have for it is basically a cylinder with the caps deleted but sculpties have messed up physics and i would like to get a sculpt editor without the caps deleted (they are there when I import into second life but they cause wierd things to happen sometimes). So doing everything in sculp maps just because I can bake them limits me to some things I want good physics on. I tried adjusting uv tiling, the planar or default method for uv mapping and all that but nothing seems to work. I figured I was maybe doing something wrong in 3ds max with my texture baking but those maps can be put in a program like uvmapper with no problem (the sphere anyway). ANy thoughts? Questions about what I am doing? I know most people don't have 3ds max so I hope someone can shed some light on this. Thank You
John

I use blender myself so if its a 3ds max problem I wont be much help, but as far as the sculpties themselves go perhaps I can. Assuming that your using the default sculpted mapping, the ends of your shape will be automatically capped when they are rendered in game. If you export the shape with capped ends, SL will go ahead and add those caps a second time.

Are you actually using a script to change the sculpt map type in SL or are you exporting these nonstandard shapes and then mapping them to the sphere model? If thats the case it would explain the strange mapping.

I use the standard sphere, box, torus or cylinder shapes in 3ds max, put my textures on them, then bake them. I then create the shape in SL the normal way and add the texture.

I make the sculpt map with a tutorial that someone posted on the forums for 3ds max, which works, but for some reason it adds transparency (when I bake the texture for the map, not the sculpt map itself) to the mix when I ask it not to in 3ds max (I wonder about this too since when I try to add transparency to a normal prim it bakes the light beyond the prim and doesn't add the alpha!) but it maps the sculpt maps ok (other than the added transparency and capped ends not mapping right like the cylinder, which I can fix by bringing in some of the vertices on the top and bottom), the torus is ok and the cylinder is almost ok, except for the tops. The box no and the sphere no. The sphere looks like it should since it is flattened but I guess not. And who knows why I get all black when I do the box...

I figured since I could texturize a sculpt map ok (except the alpha), I figured I would try to make the sphere, box etc out of a sculpt map and then use a regular prim in 2L but it still won't map right that way. If the physics were good on the sculpties then I don't think I would have a problem using anything but those...and I still have to figure out the alpha anyway. It shows up in 3ds max as no alpha at all.

As far as the physics go, unless you actually planning to turn on the physical check box, spend allot of time walking over any gaps at the corners, or walk between cut out pieces in it...the bad physics shouldnt matter.

To make your texture transparent just edit it further in a regular graphics program of your choice before uploading. Be aware, however, that sculpted prims come out very poorly if their texture is applied with any alpha.

you mentioned you used blender, I was wondering if you had any problems texture baking to any objects in that one? Do you find blender is a good program with a nice renderer?

btw, I am learning to make the sculpties less of a problem (physical wise) depending on how I size them and put them within the bounding box in 3ds max...