Most pict\photo textures you find on the web are either perfectly square or rectangular and don't map to spheres, cylinders or torus properly.
Try scaling only one axis of a 2d square, or cube, starting with 'X'.

A very long and boring example:
You have a square texture, which has 6 vertical boards. You apply it to a cube in Bryce in parametric mapping mode (like sticking a decal on).
The default Scale factor is 0 (zero) meaning it doesn't repeat. (This means 1 to me as you'll see below)

You will see 6 boards on the cube just like the original image. 1 unit.

Now to double the amount of boards going across you would think that simply doubling the Frequency on X would do it, righto? Is 2%, 50%, or 200% double?
But WTF?!?!?!..Is this math class or Bryce? ; )

This is where it gets confusing...the scale frequency factor is 6.
0 equals '1 tile of 6 boards' if you will.
6% will double the boards for a cube (6 boards x 6 sided)
12% will triple.
18% will make 4 equally tiled sections of 6 boards each.
See a trend here?
It's the percent sign that mucks it up!
% = Frequency of repetition in this case.

Here's how I think of the board pattern to get it to tile correctly.
0% = 6 boards (x1)
If you add another frequency of *6* (6%) there will be 12 boards. (x2)
If you increase the frequency to 12% it's 18 boards. (x3)
So 18% (x4) is a Frequency Percentage Increase again of 6 units.
4 times the original frequency of 6 boards = 24 vertical silly pieces of wood a/k/a 4 tiles of 6.
For 5 repeating tiles of 6 each (30 boards) increase by 6 again to 24%, for 36 boards (6 tiles)...30% ad nauseam.
Geez, I gotta be nuts to think of stuff like this!
Really. No other explanation.
For shapes other than squares you should consider getting UV Mapper and making your own spherical, torus and cylindrical maps. Will look 100 times better!
(And may save your sanity)






Texture tips and the Mat Lab cont...



Just some, hopefully, helpful suggestions for you shown above.