Yep, still working on the logo for Suguay Productions. I think I might be in the home stretch though. I got the texture for the pencil end created.
I took the UV layout that I created into Photoshop to work on it. When The UV layouts render out of 3ds Max they show up white on black. This is a bit uncomfortable to work on so when I get to Photoshop I select everything and under adjustments, I choose invert. This makes it look more normal, black lines on a white background.
For the main texturing, or painting. I add a layer and set it to multiply so I can see the lines through it. This is a step I learned from that tutorial I mentioned in a previous post. Once I have my new layer I start painting. For this time, I did all my painting on the same layer. I could have created different layers for different areas or colors if I had wanted to. I decided not to, though I did put the text on a different layer.
One of the nice things about working with UVs is that I don’t have to stay in the lines. I am not particularly adept at using masks in Photoshop yet so the fact that I could paint a little outside the lines and it wouldn’t matter was awesome. I did try to clean up a bit because I did get really messy at times.
So here is how it looked when I first saved it out. 
I forgot to turn off the background layer where all the lines from the UV are and so they show up when I save the file. I didn’t think too much of it until I got it into 3ds Max and saw that it was showing on the pencil. So I had to go back and turn off that layer and save it back out. I had to do one other thing as well.
While the text is legible here, it turned out to be upside down when I got it on the pencil. I suspected that was going to be a problem so I wasn’t surprised. The fix wasn’t too bad, however I did have to try all my options. First I tried flipping the entire UV so that the text would be upside down but appear right side up when applied to the pencil. I did suspect this wouldn’t work. I had a hunch that the placement of the UVs on the layout were integral to the way they would apply to the object. I was right. When I tried to bring the flipped layout into 3ds Max and apply it to the pencil, it was all a mess. 
Ultimately what I did was flip only the text in Photoshop so that when it came into 3ds Max it would display right side up. And I remembered to turn off the background layer. So the UV I ended up using looked like this.
Adding the texture was pretty easy. I assigned a material to the pencil selection group and then ported a bitmap into the diffuse slot. I chose my image and then rendered it. I have to additional lights in the scene at this point so this is the default lighting. 
There was a small bit that was bothering be about this. I don’t know if you can see it very well, but right at the edge of where the yellow paint starts to taper, there is an edge or lip sort of looking bit. This wasn’t right. Then I remembered that I had not turbosmoothed anything. So I applied the turbosmooth modifier to just the pencil, not the line. And now it looks much better. 
Next up, time to work on the pen.