Seamlessly texturing a sphere -- is it possible?

[Legacy_3RavensMore]

               

Like the topic says, is there a way to seamlessly texture a sphere?  If so, what tool do I need to use?

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               

yes it is possible, but it is hard to do. you can achieve it by skillfully UV mapping your model. UV mapping is possible in most 3d apps. i assume gmax has a utility for editing UV maps.

 

[edit]

you could also be clever with the texturing.

 

if you use procedural textures (i don't think this is possible in gmax) you could bake a seamless material that way.

you could also make much of your texture a single color with some detail in the middle. As long as you don't position the detail over any UV seams, you could be relatively sloppy with the UV mapping (so this is a hybrid option between using UV mapping but not being very good at it and being clever with a texture)

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_3RavensMore]

               

Off the top of my head, I was wondered what would happen if I created on 1 1024x2048 texture, and dropped a map on it.  Then sliced it; one half for the northern hemisphere, and the other for the southern hemisphere.  Created a sphere, cut it in half, and applied spherical UVW mapping to each half.  The final tweak was the flip the V tiling on the southern hemisphere.

 

For me that came out nearly perfect.  No weirdness at the polls, and no seams.  For drawing something like a world map it would be a bit tricky since I believe the poles will be centered in each 1024x1024 piece.  With some clever cut and pasting though, it shouldn't be too hard to get it right.

 

Amazing what a couple of glasses of wine can accomplish. 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

The only tool you'll need is GMax/Max.  Apply the texture then, in the modifier list, go down to UVW Mapping and select the radio button for "speherical" mapping.  Thing is, you're likely going to need a texture which is made to be applied to a sphere.  These are usually wider than they are tall and either get progressively more distorted the higher or lower you go on the image or have less detail in that range.  Like this.  Things get crunched at the top and bottom of the sphere in sphere mapping.  It really depends on the texture, though.

 

Just to be completely goofy about it, there is another way you can map a sphere in NWN, and that's by applying a transparent texture to it (UVW mapping doesn't matter in that case) and then apply a sphere map as an environment map.  When I say "sphere map" in this context, this is the type of texture I'm talking about.  Nomatter where you view the sphere from, the image will look the same.  You'll want the surface to all be the same smoothing group, though.  If you distort the sphere at all (again, make sure all faces are in same smoothing group), you can achieve really neat material effects like this. 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_rjshae]

               

If you can make a regular icosahedron, there's a nice even triangular mesh that will map to your UV. That can then be further subdivided by fours: 20, 80 (pentakis icosidodecahedron), 320, ....

 

There's apparently an Icosphere option in Blender. I'll have to give it a try.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               

If you go down the 2 hemispheric textures route there is one pitfall to be aware of. I discovered it and the solution on some hemispheres (thanks again Rolo for the models) that I was working on and have not yet released. With a UV mapped square texture you may have a circular graphic with transparent corners. If that is the case, make sure that the circular part extends all the way to the edge of the texture otherwise you get some "interesting" black artefacts. <note at this point I would have posted an example correct image, but I can't remember where I stored them  '> ).

 

Also there is an effect for Paint.net (can't remember the name) that will perform a circular distortion which, when applied to a circular texture for a hemi-spheric model, will make the hemi-sphere look "right". While I can't remember what it is called, I do know that it is part of a collection of effects that I linked to in this thread.

 

PS The TR on that thread is not me.

 

TR