Q. Why do I lose the shading on my object when I texture map it using the texture_mesh module?

For example, I have a teapot object I read in with Read_Geom. I used Read_Image to read in marble.x and use these two objects as inputs to the texture_mesh module to get a marble texture on the teapot object. The result is a teapot with a marble texture, the teapot is no longer shaded. Why is that?

A. Texture_mesh throws away the node_data of the incoming object (the teapot). The teapot's node_data consists of normals, which are used for shading. When they get thrown away, the shading is lost.