[Jeff-Groves]

What I was told by the Dev's

":One of the problems we encountered while doing this was the fact that generating automatic uv’s in max is poor and so is the map rendering(AO and others) . Mapping the ships two times(once for AO and once for Diff) was not an option for us. XSI is doing a great job on generating automatic uv’s and AO.
The workflow we used for the ships from SH5 :
-modeling in max
-exporting it to Softimage XSI(use the format ’.obj’)
-generating UV’s in XSI (is called ‘unique uv’s’)
-rendering AO (in XSI)
-exporting it to max(use the format ’.obj’)
-mapping the diffuse texture on channel 1 , but before mapping the diff you need to copy the AO uv’s channel on channel 2
This procedure can be time consuming since you will have to map every single identical piece on the ship(when mapping diffuse). You cannot delete a single polygon(while mapping diff) and duplicate a mapped one instead because every single polygon has his own mapping coordinates for AO.

You can also use this method, which is faster:
-modeling in max
-mapping the diffuse channel in max(channel 1)
-exporting it to XSI(use the format ’.obj’)
-generating uv’s for AO (channel 1 is already mapped for diffuse, make sure you use channel 2)
-rendering AO (make sure you select uv channel 2 for geberating AO)
-this part is a bit harder. The ‘.obj’ won’t export 2 uv channels . In order to export the object back to max with both uv channels you need to export the object from XSI twice(use ‘.obj’). The first time with the uv’s used for diffuse on channel 1, and the second export you are going to make is with the uv’s for AO on channel 1. In XSI you can move the uv’s from channel 2 to channel 1 by deleting channel 1.
So now you have 2 obj files , one mapped for diff and the other one mapped for AO
-import the the .obj file mapped for diff back in max
-import the the .obj file mapped for AO back in max
-save the uv channel of the object mapped for AO and copy it to the second uv channel of the object mapped for diff."

Now the Devs exported in the GR2 format so you skip the import back into Max.