3ds beginner, some questions about textures

I’m having some sort of mental block when it comes to getting the texture of my 3d model into a bitmap.

I understand the concept of uv mapping and unwrapping. But from what I can tell, I’m supposed to already HAVE the bitmap created using photoshop or something of the sort.

This boggles my mind…how can I create a bitmap that is supposed to cleanly wrap around a 3d object? Wouldn’t it be easier to simply create the 3d object, with materials, and export the textures to a bitmap?

I’ve tried rendering to a texture. It keeps exporting the shadows and lighting of my object, which I do not want, I want just one texture with some even ambient light. I haven’t flagged the lighting/shadows options when doing this either, so I’m confused as to why this is happening.

Also…it appears to do an odd job at creating the rendered texture. Bits and pieces of the texture are sprayed out all over my rendered bitmap, instead of nice and compact. There is quite a bit of black space between my texture bits. Is this by design?
Any suggestions or clarification on what I’m missing?

Hi jc_lvngstn,

let me introduce you to a handy tool!

Render template inside the UVW unwrapping tool allows you to render out a bitmap file to work with directly with your textures… enjoy!

About render to texture in 3dsmax I don’t really like it too.

Download the trial version of this program :

http://flatiron.3d-plugin.com/

This is a plugins under 3dsmax and this is very very for use.