Hey man, thanks for the pointers there, I see what you mean now... I found this tutorial: Cornerofthedreamingmonkey Its actually much better than that Gamasutra tutorial you mention. I was actually working directly off that Gamasutra tut... the author is not doing it the same way as you mention tho. Course it was written…
you dont need to isolate the polies along the seam before you unwrap to channel 2. just unwrap the whole object to uv channel 2(remember to colapse or save channel 1 if you're in an earlier version of max), scale what you dont need way down then in RTT bake out to channel 2 and start painting out those seams. once you've…