we have encountered an issue with unwrap uv modifier in Max. Its failed to save any UV animation. I can apply it, animate uvs, yet when I save and reopen the animation is gone. I checked over at the area and found this link http://area.autodesk.com/index.php/forums/viewthread/13954/. looks like its an issue with no resolution. Has anyone else encountered this issue or found a fix?
i can only say that this will be fixed in Max 2010
but Max 2009 seems to forget to save the animation out , because loading in Max 2010 does’nt resolve the issue .
a rather cool way of working arround this bug might be using Mankuas free UVWFrame plugins (don’t know if it real works in your case)
in short it can use a meshobject ( with correct vertex count and topology) and use it as UV vertex template
So when animating or deforming this mesh it animates/deforms the UV coordinates of a second meshobject
Basically we’re using unwrap uvw to create scrolling uv’s in our game. At one point in time it seemed to work, but then again the uv info is passed to a custom attribute and then extracted from that. The level artists prefer the modifier because its easier to use than animating the u or the v in the material. I’ll check out some of the other methods you all have suggested because it looks like they’ll work the same.