A Special Thanks to Atrocities..

[David E. Gervais]

Answers:

1) I use Bryce 5 to create the renderings.
2) I import the model (in this case one of AT's)
3) I enter the 'M'aterials lab and change the texture from the default 'procedural' to 'bitmap source' and then load the desired texture and hit 'apply'
4) If the texture looks odd, I return to the Materials lab and tweak the scale and orientation until it looks good.

Note: In the Materials lab is also where I add color tint and other effects like reflection, ambiance, diffusion transparency etc.

It's prety much a trial and error aproach, but after doing this for so many renders it's now second nature and I generally only need to re-enter the mat lab once or twice to get the texture the way I like it.

There is more than just texture mapping involved in making a render look right, there is the bump-map, the backgrounds, the lighting (I often use a negative light to cast shadows). and it can get complicated, but I tend to learn one new trick at a time, until my 'bag of tricks' is capable of seeing me through most renders.

I'm sorry to say that I have no experience with 3DS Max so I can't tell you how their system works. I have on occasion watched my friend work through Max to build models, but my brain went numb by the sheer number of 'variabls' that needed to be addressed prior to rendering. I'm sure you're aware the the 'default' settings are only good for basic scene rendering in 3DS Max. The learning curve for Max is about 1000 times more involved than Bryce.

Anyway, have fun playing with textures.

Cheers!