What happens is that if you really really wanted to learn instead of us just giving you the answer, you would've looked inside the source in the Zip code I gave you, studied it, and then learned the answer to the question you made just now.
"Any thoughts on this approach" - Look the damn zip! it HAS a FUNCTIONAL version of what you want, using the steps you described. It would never be a shortcut, unless you simply Copy-"pasta" the thing into your game\engine. Rather, look at the code and go find out for yourself the answers - look what the code does, learn from it, improve it if you can, and then apply to whatever end. That's how we all learned ( as well as the guy who created the example in the first place! ).
"Any thoughts on this approach" - Look the damn zip! it HAS a FUNCTIONAL version of what you want, using the steps you described. It would never be a shortcut, unless you simply Copy-"pasta" the thing into your game\engine. Rather, look at the code and go find out for yourself the answers - look what the code does, learn from it, improve it if you can, and then apply to whatever end. That's how we all learned ( as well as the guy who created the example in the first place! ).