Any Advice on Making Spherical Maps

[Gene]

Hello All,

 

I was wondering if there is a "Make Spherical Map" button in Photoshop? Plugin?

 

I have an image that I would like to use as a spherical decal, and I know the top and bottom need to be "stretched" so they map on the Sphere correctly, but I don't know an easy way to do this.

 

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

Thanks,

 

Eugene

[John Bigboote]

Godfrey (Jeff Lee...not Lew) put-up a GREAT tutorial movie on how to make a globe which would be highly beneficial to you, unfortunately the link is broken, Godfrey- can you repost that globe-tutorial?

[johnl3d]

Eugene I think flaming pear has a plugin called ornament that was suppose to do this. I did a quick test and posted what I got. Hope this helps.

I think it is a feee plug in.

 

the left is the original picture

the right is after the plug in

the ball has the the right side tga applied spherically as a cookie cutter decal

 

 

 

johnl3d

spherical.mov

[npcrosby]

I once did some digging on the Internet and found someone had created a sphere that had a pose slider attached to it. Slide the slider, and you had a rectangle. You could paste the decal on that then slide it back to a sphere.

 

I no longer know where to find it. If someone else does, perhaps they could post the link. It could be helpful.

[heyvern]

This may be more work than a plug in but it worked for me. Not as easy to apply to a texture of sorts but with some tweaking it could.

 

A simple tutorial based on a project I had to do with text on a sphere:

 

http://www.lowrestv.com/lowres/tutorials/t....asp?tut_id=t11

 

Vernon "I'm becoming spherical" Zehr

[JohnArtbox]

I used ornament for all of my Skycast environment maps.

By taking 4 photos of a reflective sphere at 90 degrees I could paint through to get a relatively good environment map. Panorama software gives a better result but it takes a lot more images & time.

If you are just talking about something like a cement texture you can cylindrically paste it onto a sphere with a vertical seam. Then create another image with a softened circular alpha and use that to stamp the texture on the top and the bottom of the sphere. Create an action which unwraps the sphere at the seam and render it to get your spherical map.

[Gene]

Thanks All,

 

I am going to run some tests on the above and let you know how I make out.

 

Cheers,

 

Eugene

[robcat2075]

Photoshop>Filter>Distort>Polar Coordinates is what I think you are referring to. It wraps and unwraps images around a center pont; one use of this is to paint out the "pinch" at the poles. This tut explains it:

 

http://www.maxoncomputer.com/tutorial_deta...rialID=54&site=

 

It can also convert 180° fisheye lens images into rectangular panoramas.

[Gene]

Thanks for all the replies.

 

I went through all that I could find and if your willing to pay for a very cool plugin by Richard Rosenman, then that is the way to go.

 

But, the method in the link (posted just above) seems the correct way to do it, albeit, a bit cumbersome.

 

Perhaps someone could make a Photoshop Action/Macro that would do this??

 

Depending on the type of thing you are mapping, a quick method that is good for a more homogeneous surface is to do a similar thing as above, but not as much effort.....use the Photoshop>Filter>Distort and chose "Rectangular to Polar". This distorts your map so that the top half will decal on a sphere properly. However, the bottom will show a seam.

 

So, from there, I simply copied and flipped the decal vortically (on a new layer). and edited each image to use the stretched areas on the top and bottom. I had to blend the area in the middle by using the Eraser tool set at 50% opacity.

 

Finally, when I am happy with the blend of the two layers, I merge them (CTRL+E) and that is about it.

 

I tested this out and it works well for certain decals that have a fairly constant surface. However, if I was doing a planet, I don't think this would work properly.

 

Thanks for your help.

 

Eugene