Well, I don't really know of any lightwave books that would excell in this area (don't really use books for lightwave, I have heard that "Inside Lightwave 7" is prety good though), but lightwave tutorials on the web, ( (url="http://"http://members.shaw.ca/lightwavetutorials/")http://members.shaw....twavetutorials/(/url) ) has an entire section devoted to texturing/surface editing. For image/procedural mat application, what you want to do is this:
1: Name the surface that you want to apply a texture to (select the desired polygons, hit "q", name it what you will)
2: Bring up your surface editor, select the surface you want.
3: For the proper surface channel (color, luminosity, specularity, etc.) click on the square button with the "T" on it. Select the existing layer, and if you want to apply an image map leave it as is (for a gradient or a procedural texture, choose that in the pull down menu at the top of the window).
4: In the pull down menu over the image preview field (should say none at this point), pull it down and choose load). After loading the desired image, choose the projection mode that you want. with most projection modes you can choose an axis. with planar projection, the axis you choose will run perpindicular to the texture that you are applying.
5: that done, you can choose automatic sizing that will size an position the texture based on the object sixe, or you can edit the fields at the bottom of the window (they are aranged in tabs, the first is texture size (in lenght units, defaults to meters), the second is postition (also in units of length, same default), the third is ratation rotation (in degrees, though I think you can change this to radians if you so desire), the fourth is faloff (in percentages).
That should be all, if you need any more help, ask...
Joe
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