7x7 Grids with textures to Sphere

[sant0s]

Hey guys,
wondering if this is possible:

I have 7x7 grids aligned, each has a texture of a part of the world map.
Now I would like the result image of all 49 grids, projected on a sphere with a spherical texture control.
Dunno if you understand what I mean

Problem is, that each texture is 5k and I can not merge them together in PS, would be to big.

I thought something like a camera projection could work, but somehow I dont get it.

Anybody has an idea?

Thx alot

[mattmos]

Merge the grids into one object, making sure to copy over materials, clusters etc, then create a surface mesh/sphere and deform by surface and the grid should wrap around the poles of the sphere as in your pic.

[sant0s]

we did this. the problem is, that I cannot strech the image as one part after I merged the grids, the 49 pieces move independent.

[mattmos]

Do you mean the polygons move independently or the uvs? The uvs will end up sitting over each other using this method so scaling might nto work well, translation should be ok though.

Might want to consider a different setup though, using uv offsets to recreate the grid in the texture layout. Bit more convoluted but better methodology.

[sant0s]

first, thx!
but Ill try to explaint it a bit better:

If i use a NASA world map like this, http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/im ... o_2048.jpg, the streching of the continents is almost correct and I can wrap it around a sphere.
But I have a mercator projection like this, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... ection.jpg. The streching is, specially at north and southpole, uncorrect.GHreenland is bigger than africa for example.
If i project the mercator projection around a sphere, I can strech the spherical projection in the Y-axis and get the result I need - but thats where I stuck.
All works well if I use a single texture but not with my setup.

hmm, need to try what you mean with offset the uv's...

[NNois]

So you need to pre-deform your 7x7 grid.
I see it like this:
1.Freeze the projections on your grid then Merge your grids together
2.Deform you grid so you keep the good proportions
Ther is several way to do this.
Using the scale tool with a falloff: selecting the north and south points and doing a scale with the falloff tool set to the distance to the equator, you can after adjust the curve in the operator
Or using an ice tree...
3.Clone the result
3.Deform the clone to your sphere so you can adjust the deformed grid

this should work

[Pancho]

Can't you throw all the grids into a group and then use ice to deform/morph them into a sphere?

The point ids on a grid follow a certain rule. If you use modulo it's easy to assign coordinate numbers to all of them. Then you could use these coordinates to find the position on a sphere (e.g. -90 - 90/ 0 - 360).

[rray]

Photoshop is actually very good with huge images. Unless you have a very old machine this image size (35000X35000) shouldn't be a big problem for it. You could then do the anti stretch stuff in PS.

[sant0s]

@Pancho and NNois, will try that - thank you so far.

@rray: yea, we did that and Photoshop can handle 35k images. But if I get it to run with that setup, I could also use bigger files and dont need any blending tricks while flying from space to earth and than I have close to 60k. And we had problems with pictures bigger than 2 gb.

Actually it is just another try on founding out how to handle large images... so thx for your help guys, will give that a try.

[NNois]

Sorry if i was not clear I mean deforming your merged grid to obtain the anti stretch.
then deform to surface the grid, i don't seen any needs here using ice to deform to a sphere, but using it to antistretch perfectly is a good idea and simple to do.

So you need to pre-deform your 7x7 grid.
I see it like this:
1.Freeze the projections on your grid then Merge your grids together
2.Deform you grid so you keep the good proportions
Ther is several way to do this.
Using the scale tool with a falloff: selecting the north and south points and doing a scale with the falloff tool set to the distance to the equator, you can after adjust the curve in the operator
Or using an ice tree...
3.Clone the result
3.Deform the clone to your sphere so you can adjust the deformed grid

this should work