CompuServe Messages

Thanks for the info. Before getting my hands dirty I am trying to get a broad overview of how things work. Here is my current understanding: there are three ways to make a material (this is that same as a texture?) 1. A photograph (is this most common?). 2. A mathmatical description of a surface and 3. just design yourself a bitmap. 2 has the advantage of no lose of resolution as you zoom in and if you wrap it around a curve it will not be distorted in any way it should not be. I guess 1 has disadvantages from size relitive to 2 and 3. Any other considerations? To make a building, for example, should I just take a photograph of a building and wrap it around a wireframe? What do most people do?