"Greg M. Johnson" wrote:

[Snip code]

> 
> What happened was that the whole thing looks like brass except for the
> one segment I painted white.  The question is why didn't the texture
> statement at the end there override the pigment statement above?   I'm
> trying to understand the rationale so I can do things more intuitively
> in the future....

I think the rationale is that union{} allows you to group objects to be
able to interact with them as if they were one object, without having to
go through the trouble of applying transformations to every single one
of them, rather than creating a single object out of many constituents. 
Think of it as a "group" rather than the strictly mathematical "union".

It can be a b*tch sometimes (as with the texturing of my tank turrets in
the previous IRTC round) but it is better this way in most cases.

Think about it for a second, if it behaved the way you thought it did,
how would you be able to change the color of the skin of your person
without changing the color of his/her eyes, hair and fingernails?

-- 
Francois Labreque | The surest sign of the existence of extra-
    flabreque     | terrestrial intelligence is that they never
        @         | bothered to come down here and visit us!
  videotron.ca                                  - Calvin

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