Hello!
I’ve made a space environment map with a little freeware program. It outputs 6 square maps. Now, I wanna use these in Maya, as an environment sphere. Questions are, as follows:
1: How do I stitch these 6 maps together into one texture? Tips on applications would be appreciated.
2: Since (I assume) they are meant to be applied to an environment cube, not a sphere, will I have to distort the maps using some filter before stitching them to get them onto a sphere without distortion? Tips on tools here to would be appreciated.
3: If I want to add something large, say a closeup planet or a sun, that would occupy a large portion of the map (essentially going over one or more map border), what is the best way of doing this? The application I used have no straightforward way of adding anything but distant stars and nebulae, so I need options.
A few thoughts I pulled off the top of my head were either: Stitching the texture, getting it into Maya, adding the object in 3d space and doing a chromeball render or a texture bake of the ball plus the object. Or is there some Photoshop trickery that is easier to use?