#mappings
I'd say a single map is best. I've seen Jamie do it by networking two
computers, one with 3ds and one with AniPro. He renders the scene with the
mapped material, then loads the material bitmap in AniPro, edits the pixels,
saves the bitmap back out to the shared directory, and then re-renders the
scene until he gets exactly what he wants. The nice thing is, once you've got
the mapping coords. and material assigned, you don't have to touch them–all
you need to do is update the bitmap and re-render. If you're doing this on a
single machine, set your paint program into the Program menu in 3ds and shell
out to it.
– Jack