Spinning and mapping

Test vases containing magic lights

Today I did some practice spins --- it seems so obvious now. The resulting vase was pleasing enough to justify doing a test render using texture maps. Right, so how do I do texture maps? Well it's pretty straight forward to get the basics.

Troubles
I didn't understand why my initial renders didn't show anything past the edge of the furthest away vase - the answer was obvious, clipping on the camera settings?

Untroubles: Yesterday's min-rant about not being able to easily apply a shaderless texture (for a background scene which would be presented with it's own light values). Well looking at the comments in the tutorial someone suggested changing the object's Ray Visibility in the Properties tab, disabling Diffuse, Glossy and Shadows. It works, it's easy.  Sorry for doubting you, Blender!

Object Properties for Ray Visibility are a quick fix for shaderless materials in Cycles -- I think