Alright, I’ve got a project to make a number of planets, but before doing the hard work of detailed planet textures, here’s a practice one of Earth where I was trying to solve some problems I’ve run into… only I didn’t solve them. Images are below.
As you can see in the first image, if I use a square or rectangular version of earth, and simply apply it using ortho/sphere, the poles get severely warped. (In addition, there is a noticeable line on one side of the planet going top to bottom. I know how to solve that one with using texture offset, though, since it’s just the edge of the texture.)
Using UV mapping so I can paint the poles more directly, I get a line break in the texture. (I know the picture I included wasn’t the best example, but bear with me. Just imagine those grid lines aren’t there.
I included a snapshot of my UV unwrap for the planet. Notice that unlike with a repeating square texture, I can’t just do a simple offset to get textures to match correctly at the seam. I’d need to do something far more complex, something to deal with all those edges that aren’t even touching in my UV slices, and I’m not sure what.
If you couldn’t tell, I just figured out how to even make UV seams today. However, searching online as well as here I haven’t had much luck finding a good solution. Is there a simple one? Or do I have to really dig in?
Well, I ran into this problem too as a matter of fact, although by mapping the texture differently, you can avoid the problem. All you have to do it UV unwrap each half of the sphere and make the textures mapped to circles.
There probably is a way to map it using the rectangle mode, but I’m not sure how I could help in that topic.
Add a grid. The x and y resolution of the grid will determine the resolution of the sphere. Unwrap it from top view with project from view (bounds). Move it one unit up. Go into front view and press shift-w. Warp it 180°. go into side view. Select all and warp it 360 °. Remove doubles (not the poles, deselect all the vertices at the poles). Then you have a UV sphere with the perfect UV data to map onto a map.
I don’t see how this solves the problem. There would still be a seam at the equator and the UV unwrap would be like circles that are hard to paint on and match at the edges. Rectangular shapes are easy to offset and edit away edges of a texture for seams, but weird circles and stuff? I don’t see how, without special software or tons and tons of time.
I’m not sure what you mean by adding a grid and resolution of sphere. You mean I can change the texture resolution or something? For resolution of the mesh though, isn’t it generally just subsurf (I set to smooth mode as well)?
I think I kinda get some of that, but I’ll need a UV map and remember the final product is a sphere so whatever I do it has to be a sphere when I’m done, and not an unfolded one (if that’s where you were going).
Honestly that just left me a bit confused, I’ve done a few projects with Blender, but am still pretty much a noob
