Some quick test renders:
Notice the funkiness around the nose. While the texture there does need some work, it is also partly due to vertex shading. Some vertex illumination in there would improve it.
Pretty close, Keeper, but it's a little more complicated than that. Let's take a peek, shall we?
Upper-Left: mapping channel 1
This is the mapping that I want to end up using.
Upper-Right: mapping channel 2
Planar mapping straight on for the front view photo. Notice that it's a bit cock-eyed. The chick in the photo was a bit rotated, so I had to do some compensating. This resulted in a slightly rotated uv mapping.
Lower-Left: mapping channel 3
Side view. Getting the idea here?
Lower-Right: transparency map
This is the transparency map applied to the side view photo. It hides the nose, mouth, and a little bit of the eyes. This is the only work that has been done in PS.
Notice that the transparency map is for the side view. Several reasons. The main reason being that painting a trans map for the front isn't my cup of tea. You can do it the other way around, but I just don't like it.
Since the side view has transparency, this means that some thought has to go into the final material. In the material, the front view is on the "bottom", then the side view is "layered on top" of it. Where the side view is transparent, the front view shows through.
Remember channel 1? Well, when I baked the material, this is the channel that I baked to. As a side note, I made sure that the textures have 100% self-illumination. Didn't see any real need to bake in any scene lighting for this.
Man, I love talking about these kinds of things!
Those stupid little things that few know about, yet can save some serious bacon. Know what I mean? I even went to Google to see what is out there regarding this and found next to nothing.
The final tutorial will be hosted at SomethingLeet. One of the guys over there approached me about writing some 3DS Max tutorials for them, and this is what I decided to babble out.
Hehehe.
I'm all giddy with excitement.
I love this stuff!