First off, thanks to all those who helped me on my recent forum postings, I really appreciate it.  OK, so recently I started trying to see what I could do with picture textures? (is that the right term?) and I've found it bewilderingly strange.  What I find vexing is that when I use them on pre-existing models (in this case, on the daz3d ruins model) they come out beautifully.  But when I try to use them on my own models (3ds models made using Silo) they never look very good.  The picture is stretched and distorted.  Basically I'm wondering what I can do to fix this.  Is it the model itself?  Is it the number of polygons in the model?  Is it the way the models' mesh is stretched?  Please help!  I have hundreds of wonderful pictures, most of which are high quality digital pictures I've taken of all sorts of things from rocks, walls, tree trunks, etc., and I would hate to think that I've wasted all this time gathering them to only be able to use them in a limited way. I'm attaching a picture to give you a sense of what I mean.  The model on the lest is the tree trunk from daz3d's ruins, while the right is just a basic trunk I made with Silo.