CGTalk - Texturing a Sphere?

Hazzerz

10-04-2008, 08:50 PM

Hi everyone

I feel as if I'm asking an extremely basic and noob-ish question here, but I simply can't figure this out.

I'm trying to texture a plain old sphere (I've even tried geo spheres). I'm trying to create a spherical environment for an outer-space scene. I made the texture in Photoshop already, it is simply a collection of small stars against a black background. When I put the texture onto my sphere model however It becomes incredibly distorted, it doesn't matter what type of mapping I'm using either, spherical, planar, cube..nothing works right, there is always some part of the texture that is distorted. The stars themselves get stretched out and squashed and..you name it.

I understand that I can't just lay a square background onto a spherical object and have everything look okay, but I'm not sure how I can correct this. I've tried editing the texture itself in PS but that hasn't helped much, someone mentioned using the polar coordinates filter but that just made it worse.

Any tips for me? I've been stuck on this for weeks now =\

Osirus1156

10-06-2008, 02:51 AM

I assume you are using 3DS Max.

Now before I try to put any texture on anything I always use a checker pattern first, you can find it by going to your materials and clicking on the 'Standard' button next to the maps name. Then picking checker and changing the tiling to 20x20 or 10x10.

If its just a basic sphere and you haven't done anything to it the checker should look relatively square, possibly a little wavy by the poles but that's normal.

After that just use the UVW Unwrap modifier and click on edit then goto the tools menu > render UVW Template, choose the size you want and click render, save it off. Apply your star texture to that (making sure its blackish around the top and bottom of the UVW map to minimize seams) save that off as whatever you like and use that as a texture for your sphere.

After that it should look good!

If it does not post a picture so I can see that problem a little better. :)

Hazzerz

10-06-2008, 03:28 AM

I am using 3Ds Max, yes.

And that worked like a charm, thank you so frikkin' much!

There is still a very small amount of distortion the poles, but it's so much more localized than before and with a star field it's next to impossible to see, so I am more than happy with the results.

Thanks again, it was driving me crazy :D

scrimski

10-06-2008, 06:20 AM

Don't use a sphere primtive, but a box with a spehrify modifier. Easier to unwrap.
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=596300

johnnymoha

10-06-2008, 09:32 PM

Add you can stick with quads that way, and you know you like that :)

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