I've never seen a captive raised Leopard or Sulcata on here that is not pyramided and many times even worse than my Redfoot is and nothing like a wild animal. Some are even raised outdoors in great sunny humid places like San Diego and still not smooth. How is this explained? away?
This is absurd. These pages are filled with smooth tortoise of those species. And San Diego does not have humid weather most of the year. And, as has already been mentioned, sun has nothing to do with pyramiding or not.
Where the sulcata comes from, they have a hot humid rainy season for 3-4 months every year. Conditions are like Florida or New Orleans in summer there. This is when baby sulcatas hatch. During the dry portion of the year, they live in warm damp underground burrows to escape the heat above ground.
Further, did you ever put a meter under a Vita-Lite? They produce a nice looking light spectrum, but almost no UV.
What you are suffering from is called superstition. You are observing things in front of you and jumping to incorrect conclusions for the wrong reasons.
Because you posted this on Champoi's thread, I needed to respond to it here, but this is not the place for this discussion. If you want to discuss this further, learn where you've gone wrong logically speaking, and learn what really works and why we know what really works, I'm happy to oblige, but you'll need to start your own thread on the topic.