Ive gone through the pdf a few times, and its beginning to make sense. You really have to read it through before it begins to click, and the reading (in my own opinion) isnt the best or easiest to follow. I also dont think its in the proper order for teaching, but anyways.......

I used one of the preset tubes and played w/ that a little to better understand how the spline room works. Still somewhat awkward at this point, but thats ok...

How did you get the curves smoothed out?!? Do you go through the points converting to curves?!? And youre using the pen too to add lines to the path right?!?

In my 1st example, I actually used a vertex polyline and a closed polyline (a circle) and extruded using the piping settings, then smoothed a bit. I also moved some of the vertices around, for added realism, but not really what I expected to render... When I set a shader to it, I didnt get the mapping I expected either, but will try again and see how it goes...

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..