Thought I'd share some information that might be useful for us track builders after I responded to a thread in the Car Modding section about UV mapping that you may or may have not seen. I've been try to use and understand 3ds Max for a while now, for the most part I have got my head around the 3d modelling although I'm no expert, the hardest thing about track building or any level designing in my opinion is the quality of the texture work. Textures can either make or break a track for me and are damn hard to get right, so here are a few applications used in the film and game industry that make texturing a much simpler and intuitive process, although not entirely replacing the UVW modifiers and PhotoShop. BodyPaint 3D This is a very powerful texturing application that works with 3ds Max, think PhotoShop crossed with a 3d app.
Here is an amazing time lapse of a head mesh being textured, gives you a good idea of the possibilities, imagine cones, pit buildings and armcos while watching.
Autodesk also have a 3d texturing app, I've not tried this app yet but seeing as we probably all use Autodesk 3ds Max to make tracks this could be the one. Mudbox Happy painting.
I find Mudbox useful for creating high-detail geometry to then bake down to a normal map. But this applies mostly to track-side objects. Photoshop (and 3DSMax by itself) is/are still the most useful program for the vast majority of what the player sees and what typically (for me, anyway) really sets one track apart from another--that is to say, things like the road texture (and detail textures), grass/terrain, and trees/foliage. I find 'support' programs like Genetica (http://www.spiralgraphics.biz/genetica.htm) and nDo (http://philipk.net/ndo.html) to be much more useful in this respect.
