First off, I hate photoshop as a solution to make textures. I hate it 
even more when trying to work out how to do it for a 3D object, instead 
of a flat surface. So.. I had a crazy idea, which is seems someone else 
had to. lol

Now, there is a trick someone used for making scuplties for Second Life, 
which involves a mirrored sphere, a spherical camera, a texture that 
generates colors based on the angle of the light ray hitting it, and an 
object, with "no image" set to it. It works, to a point, but it has a 
massive flaw. Complex detail will get "lost", due to the resulting 
displacement map not quite producing a clean result.

Now, apparently we have a "mesh camera", based on some googling. I 
haven't really looked hard at the documentation on the beta, so had no 
clue. And, there is some trick to "back" texture onto a mesh, based on 
this. This is brilliant. But.. I would also kind of prefer, if possible 
to avoid the whole mesh thing, to a point. So.. Is there an "object camera"?

See, my thinking here is that you:

1. Create your object.
2. Make a "merge" copy of it, so its only got outer surfaces.
3. Place that, with "no image" over the same place as the camera.
4. Resize, or, if needed, build a slightly bigger version of the same 
thing, as a mirror.

Then you do two passes. First pass produces a displacement map, as per 
the scuplty, which could be converted to a mesh object, fairly 
trivially. Second pass includes textures, and maybe addon bits of 
things, screws, panels, etc., which add finer detail, but don't need to 
be "real", that a pure texture can't, tacked onto the surface of your 
"no image" copy (also no-image). In principle, the result should be both 
a mesh object, once converted from the displacement map, which you can 
adjust a bit, as needed, and a texture, which exactly matches the 
contours of the object you are applying it to.

Am I off my rocker thinking about doing such a thing, or not?

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