Hello everyone, I'm new to the forums and was wondering if I could run somthing by some people.. I have a question regarding a few things in 3d studio max. First of all in regards to a model for a game is there a down side to having more than one texture for it? I completed one which uses ( 2 , 512 x 512 skins, as well as 3 seperate alpha maps for certain sections ) Also I was wondering with character studio if there is a way to mirror physiques one side of the models attached bone vertices to the other side??? Lastly this character im doing is going to weild a sword. Is there anyway i can attach this sword to the biped? Ex: I want the sword to rest on his back out of his hands, than an animation where he weilds the sword from his back and holds it so it can be swung etc... Well thats about it, thanks :)

In alot of games the sword is attached to the characters hand via a 'hook' or with code. In the book... 2D Artwork and 3D Modeling for Game Artists
by David Franson (Paperback - November 27, 2002) there is an example with attaching the gun to a monsters hand.

There's no such limit as 1 texture per model, although as low as possible is preferred. But the good thing about pixel shader-enabled applications (I'm sure 3DSMAX supports them too?) can use for example an RGBA texture but use the R-channel as alpha or the G-channel or the B-channel, or all three of them. You should discuss with your local programmer what your situation is and see how you can write specific code that allows you to do maybe 'new things'. Creative developing.

You can add any object to a biped and have it co-animated, but that is generally not convenient when transferring your model to your engine. The easiest way is to attach a dummy object and connect the sword to it at runtime. You could even use one of the bones for it.

Try to use one texture, you dont have too though. You can do alpha maps in photoshop and export as .TGA file format and preserve them on your main texture. I would honestly try to keep it to one texture per model. If you have hundreds of models in a game it can save lots of space and time for hardware to do other things. Try researching layers and alpha layers and use an image format that has an alpha layer channel.