Texturing a Sphere

[BlkBullet23]

How would someone go about texturing a sphere without the texture showing visible breakage/inconsistency? :confused:

[Idiot]

well, you basically want to set up the UV layout perfectly and then edit in photoshop (or similar program), and then edit the UVs if the image still isnt the way you want it. Outside of that, I'm not sure how to help.

[BlkBullet23]

And how do you set up the UV perfectly?

When I UV map the sphere I tried splitting it horizontally, but then the top and bottom of the sphere are way more detailed than the sides when I go and apply texture.

[mslaf]

And how do you set up the UV perfectly?

You cannot, at least on the polygon meshes.

It still depends on the sphere wireframe structure but most often you need a kind of cylindrical - but still more spherical - projection for the sides and the planar for the top and the bottom - where the inconsistencies are the most visible.

http://www.mslaf.com/files/uv1.jpg

Another way is to create separate projection on each group of faces that vertically lay in the same line.

If you use any kind of 3D painting program like zbrush, mudbox, deep paint or cs4, the 'perfect' setup is not required at all.

[SynaGl0w]

Well if I wanted to texture a sphere perfectly, I would do a sphere unwrap on the first UV channel and then I would create a second UV channel and do a projection from the top view. I would then paint vertex colors on the top and bottom. Then I would import the sphere into UT3 and create a material that uses a vertex color controlled Lerp to blend between both UV channels thus creating a sphere without seams or funkyness at the top and bottom.

[mslaf]

If you want to split the sphere in half you need a planar projection for top and the bottom and use the 'relax' tool in for each UV island to adjust the UV vertices.

http://www.mslaf.com/files/uv2.jpg

It may be a single UV island as well.

EDIT1:

An example:

http://www.mslaf.com/files/uv3.jpg



Then I would import the sphere into UT3 and create a material that uses a vertex color controlled Lerp to blend between both UV channels thus creating a sphere without seams or funkyness at the top and bottom.

The problem is, that using traditional methods like PS painting, it's difficult to paint the texture that has a spherical UV projection. There's no problem in using single UV channel to display the texture correctly without any inconsistencies.

[BlkBullet23]

Niiice, thanks guys.

mslaf, that sphere is looking good there.