A Wings 3d Candle

All three are the same candle; the one on the left, the fat one, is a result of me asking Poser to "smooth" the rough edges of the geometry. That didn't go so well.."Does this setting make me look fat?"

The one in the middle is better, but I ended up having to paint on the "translucent glow" because every other option made the candle somewhat transparent, and not in a good way. The last candle needs a better smoke image at the top--it's just painted on a 2 dimensional plane, with the not-smoke made transparent. I did get the candle texture map to be ok, using the old free UVMapper by Steve Cox. I tried doing it in Wings, and it was wack no matter what I did--you have to sort of disassemble the model and the reassemble it..I think. This is what the UV test map looked like on the first version of this candle:

I tried splitting the candle in two pieces vertically, and it almost worked..but the sides stretched all crazy-- so anything you would want to paint on there, it would stretch like the test pattern you see there. You want the maps to be all neat and square, and believe me, there is an art to it. It's harder than modelling, to be honest.

I almost forgot--I made an oil barrel on Friday, and textured it, and used it with a Poser in a render:
(J looked at the barrel and said that Kerosene is a 2 and not a 3--originally my texture map had a 3 on the Hazmat symbol).

The character is gypsyangel's Mynx, at Daz3d.com, and the back wall is by -AppleJack- on Renderosity.com. I just painted on the hair and removed the high heels from the original outfit on Mynx.