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Working with channels is a very efficient way to interface with the gaming engine, but a sloppy game developer can introduce a model to the game engine with all sorts of unneeded or exaggerated channels. If this happens, the game engine can ignore the extra channels and get the wrong information, which can cause your hero to march off into battle without a weapon. Worse, it can crash the system.

To prevent problems and to streamline the number of channels that are included with game models, Max includes a Map Channel Info editor that you can use to manipulate the various channel data. This editor, shown in Figure 34.1, can be opened using the Tools⇒Channel Info menu command.

FIGURE 34.1

The Map Channel Info dialog box lets you edit channel data.

Using the Map Channel Info dialog box

The Map Channel Info dialog box shows lots of information, including the Object Name; its ID; its Channel Name; the number of Vertices, Faces, and Dead Vertices (unattached vertices); and its Size. With this information, you can quickly determine which channels are taking up the most space and eliminate them.

All objects include some default channels for mesh, which holds the geometry; vsel, which holds the selected vertices; -2:Alpha, which holds the alpha channel information; -1:Illum, which holds illumination values; and channel 0:vc, which holds vertex color information. Objects also include at least one default map channel (even if it is empty). These channels cannot be deleted.

Cross-Reference

Vertex colors are covered along with painting on objects in Chapter 18, “Creating Compound Materials and Using Material Modifiers.” •

The interface lets you Copy and Paste selected channels. You can give each channel a name with the Name button. Beneath the Copy button, text appears that lists the information currently copied in the Copy Buffer. Selected channels can be copied only between channels that have the same number of vertices.

The Clear button clears out the selected channels, but you cannot clear a map channel if there is another map channel above it. The Add button adds a new map channel to the object. Objects can hold as many as 99 map channels. The Clear and Add buttons also apply UVW Mapping Clear or UVW Mapping Add modifiers to the Modifier Stack. The Paste command also adds a modifier. These modifiers are convenient because they can easily be removed or reordered in the Stack. If changes have been made in the Modifier Stack, the Update button reflects these changes in the Map Channel Info dialog box.

The SubComp button shows the channel components if they exist. For example, map channels can be broken into X, Y, and Z components, and other channels such as Alpha have R, G, and B components. The Lock button holds the current channels even if another object is selected.

Select by Channel modifier

After new channels have been created, you can recall them at any time using the Select by Channel modifier. This modifier is found in the Modifiers⇒Selection⇒Select by Channel menu command. Using this modifier, you can choose to Replace, Add, or Subtract a given channel from the selection. The available channels for the selection are listed by their channel name in a drop-down list.

Rendering to a Texture

When working with a game engine, game designers are always looking for ways to increase the speed and detail of objects in the game. One common way to speed game calculations is to pre-render the textures used in a game and then to save these textures as texture maps. The texture map takes more memory to save but can greatly speed the rendering time required by the game engine. This process of pre-rendering a texture is called texture baking.

Caution

If you bake a texture into an object and then render it with the rest of the scene, the object gets a double dose of light. •

Texture baking can be accomplished in Max using the Rendering⇒Render to Texture menu command (or by pressing the 0 key). This opens the Render to Texture dialog box. In several ways, the Render to