Ident Two - Reactor

I've been trying my best to get to grips with reactor. It's tricky stuff, but so far I have been able to get a few things out of it. My idea for the second ident is to use the cube in a different way other than it just turning into place. A crane will knock into the cube causing the parts to fly about in different directions.
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I've had a play around in reactor with rigid body collections and have managed to come up with the following video. This is just a small test I have done to give the general idea as to what I would like to achieve.
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I would like to have the ball attatched to the crane so i've been playing around with reactor rope also. This is quite ambitious but i'm hoping everything will join up and work together!
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This is a test video I have created using reactor rope.

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The Cube Faces (detail)

It may seem like an easy thing, applying a few images onto cube faces. But I found with most things, it isn't as easy it might appear to be.
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I obtained a selection of images i believed suited the channel, and themes from my mood board design. The images ranges from underwater, moantains to construction plans etc.
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The images had to be split up into 6 seperate images so each part could be applied to the surfaces of the cube. Easy peasy. I split up the images into 6 sections using Photoshop, imported them into 3D max, applied them onto the cube face, hit render and VOILA! it's wrong! Take a look at the rendered picture.

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The images are all wonky and do not align properly. Just look at the pencil! I realised that i hadnt compensated for the black dividing grid lines on the cube. I had to put all my images back into Photoshop and I created a template with black lines already on. This was a long shot. I put the image on this and using layers, I copied each individual square and saved it as a new file.

<-- So I went from this...Put it onto this -->

Then copied each section the square and made lots of little these.. Some of the image was lost, but it's ok, honest :) You don't notice anyway.

The final result..

Cube Re-Design

Thought i would update my blog to show how i'm getting along with the idents. With it being so close to the end of the semester, my idents are really shaping up and should be ready to be handed in on time! Well they have to be i spose :-)
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I'll start off with the Cube itself. This was actually done very early on in the project, i just didn't do a blog about it. Thought i better had as it's a big change in the design.
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I had problems with my original cube using planes and chamfer boxes, and being able to rotate them like a proper rubiks cube. Although my cube was good as it was, I had to think of another way around it. I decided to remove the planes and place the images I was using directly onto the chamfer boxes surface vertex. This simplified the cube and removed the annoying planes I was using. I dont know why I didnt think of this before :-/

Applying the materials onto the cube sides took a lot of time as each one had to be rotated accordingly. Also I had to make use of the multi-material function, something I didn't know existed. The material viewer seems to be limited to only 24 materials, and I wasn't sure how I could add more. The multi layers got around this problem. I'll explain more on this in my write up.

Although there is not much difference in appearance, the new method of making the cube sorted out all my problems with rotating it.

<-- Original Cube - Re-Design Cube -->