1) When I created my asteroids, after finishing with the UVW mapping, I applied a plugin called DirtyReyes from Reyes-Infografica to the mesh. That gives a nice base to work from when you're making your texture map. I also used a handy dandy plugin called TLUnwrap, which, among other things, can unwrap a DirtyReyes texture to the mapping coordinates you spent so long setting up. If you use this, when you create your DirtyReyes material, be sure to set the self-illumination to 100% or it won't look right. You'll know what I'm talking about if you play with these plugins for a bit.
2) I'm a big fan of layering all kinds of crazy images in Photoshop to make a good texture. I won't go into details, but suffice to say, when I was done, there was a pretty noticeable seam running around my asteroid. There's a plugin called Deep Paint 3D, from Right Hemisphere, which is a great tool for removing seams like these… AND it has a free trial version! I don't feel like writing a tutorial on it though, so go figure it out for yourself.
3) I used Max's built-in MultiRez modifier to drop the polygon count of the asteroid down to something more appropriate for the game. You may need to do this too, depending on where you plan to use your asteroid.
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I hope you learned something from this tutorial. If you have any questions, or if anything is particularly unclear, please, write to me. Also, if you know of an easier way of doing any of this, I'd REALLY like to hear from you!
- Waylon Brinck
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