Well, I bumbled into an answer that didn't require learning a new piece of software...though I thank you for your suggestions and will look at Blender.
However, I just made a long rectangle in the color I wanted, did a "map object -> sphere" , and got precisely what I wanted, a beautiful, shiny a
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (2005-01-28 at 1844.21 -0500):
> This sounds like something that might be easier to do in Blender, an
> open source 3D application at www.blender3d.org . While the tool takes
> some getting used to, it's well worth it.
It is a bit overkill for this, specially if you do not kn