hey dizzy, ever hear texporter?  its a plugin for 3dsmax and basically takes a picture of the mesh that you have applied a uvw map to.  makes life very easy to  make textures (and is the tool i use exclusivly to do my maps) and takes much of the guess worrk out of making  textures.  i don't remember the site, but you probably can do a google search for it and find it.  
Robert