Today I put together this test track to see how the cylindrical mapping tool behaved along different axis. Here are my results:
Vertical tube with yellow flame: SUCCESS - KeyShot has always functioned fine when mapping labels to cylinders imported along a vertical axis. The mapping icon functions as expected for translation, rotating and scaling. In this case I added 2 separate yellow flames (.png files with transparency) to a black painted tube.
Horizontal tube, right-to-left with blue flame: PARTIAL SUCCESS - Mapping this tube is still fairly intuitive with the cylindrical mapping controls. Rotation is as expected, however translation is reversed. I had to drag the arrow to the left if I wanted it to move the label to the right.
Horizontal tube, front-to-back, multi-color w/text: PARTIAL SUCCESS - putting the initial texture on the tube went fairly quickly, however, to fine tune the placement, the mapping icon tools behaved in reverse. To translate to the front, I had to drag the arrow towards the back, and to rotate the texture clockwise, I had to turn the icon counter-clockwise.
Angled Tube: FAILED - If you squint your eyes, you can kind of make out the skewed KeyShot logo. It was very painful trying to get the mapping icon to align even partially with the angled tube, and often after rotating the icon it would just flip to some random angle. Moreover, if I tried adjusting IOR or specularity, the label would disappear and I'd have to select 'position' and point to approximately where it was to have it appear again.
What happens to the applied mapping if you tilt one of your "successes"?
-John