well it's more of a general thing. Probably better to explain where I'm coming from: I'm a commercial designer using Carrara for packaging visuals mainly. So artwork for, say, a kid's toy pack is done s/s in 2d, as I know you know! So if I know a cylinder has a height of x and a diameter of n, that gives me the circumference and I can lay down a flat grey area to that dimension (height and circ.), position my artwork correctly in the grey background and then export a jpg at any resolution I want without tidying up any bleeds, stray lines or trims. Then it's really simple to make a white mask over the top, to shape any cut-outs etc, turn the background grey to black and export again as a greyscale alpha. Hey presto - one ready-made parametric shader!
The same technique works for bumps for embossed letters and so forth.
Layers lists allow me to apply decal-style shaders to a general background (the original question). But Carrara produces its UV templates in square format, which distorts the "unpeeled" shape and makes reworking art to suit carrara a real pain in the btm. I would love to use UV maps, but the pain is too great. For my low-level constructions, it's much easier to let the real pack dimension and the real artwork work together. It only falls down when the shape is too complicated/organic to work out the unpeeling in which case I use best guess.
It's a shame about UV mapper - I really liked the friendly way the mapping could be oriented and split. Perhaps I'll get a PC.....er......no.
