Hi guys,
a client wants me to design an allover print mini soccer ball like this:
Ginormous pattern
Not only is the pattern quite difficult, I have no idea how to assemble a congruent graphic on this, since every part gets sown together and warped. So Blender makes most sense to me, because I could texture draw, export, marking the crucial overlapping points and then see how I can move the image around in instances to get this to line up.
Any ideas on how to get that pattern? 
maybe start with a mirrored cube:
add a subdivision modifier and a cast to sphere modifier and play around with the vertices in edit mode until it looks something like this:
without modifiers:
Then add seams and UV unwrap, but I am no expert in this.
(Blender version 3.0.1 )
ball_pattern_3.0.1_v01.blend (773.3 KB)
Hey, that’s pretty smart, I wonder if this can be done with mirror modifiers to get the panels as exactly equal as possible… Very good starting point, thank you!
Hey there, once again,thanks a lot for your advice!
Now this comes down to a basic question again - when I apply the cast modifier, the ball’s roundness is lost, I tried making edges sharp, checked for faces inside, nothing, I’d probably have to subdivide, since this isn’t NURBS, or apply the subsurf modifier… I’m GUESSING 
Make the pattern in Gimp / Photoshop…
Once it is properly repeating it will look correct on the mesh.
The problem is that I’ll have to create a design in Illustrator and paste that onto the maxi pads correctly, since there will be bleed areas that won’t be visible, but will leave white gaps if not placed correctly, like on the Original FIA Quatar ball. So I need to extrude the seams inward by the amount the ball maker will hopefully tell me soon, when hopefully handing me over the template soon.
Since the maxi pads aren’t connected here/sown togetherit’s hard for me to imagine where the design elements will later connect on the ball - thus, I want to get that ground work done in Blender, where I can mark these areas right on the texture and then export the UV.
Unfortunately, I have to follow the producer’s shape…
As stated before, I’m not required to make the ball in Blender, but I need to do that to be able to shift the recurring element around on those maxi pads, so they line up properly.
The client company has people who will take a picture of a business card to inspect the raster density of the print, which noone will ever perceive, just so they can say they did their job and made sure it was done in the highest possible precision - so you can imagine the hell I’m in
As for the UV unwrapping,
mark these edges as seams:
apply a level of subdivision:
Unwrap
(note that the orange mesh here is an artifact of @Matakani 's grab I downloaded…)
Here you can delete the other three sections and copy/rotate/mirror the remaining to the other side (delting duplicate vertices and recalculating normals)
add another sub-d modifier and another cast modifier
add the texture
ball_pattern_3.0.1_v02.blend (918.7 KB)
Man… I did this yesterday with the subsurf modifier applied, marked the single maxipads on the ball, projected from view, scaled them to dimension, pulled the outermost vertices to shape, pinned all on the outside, reduced stretch, moved on to next. Way to waste time
I got the UV mapping down, that’s not a problem, but why do I need to pull the outermost vertices into the white areas? And although I marked all seams correctly and sphere-unwrapped, I got an unshapely mess of a UV, I guess that’s because of sphere unwrap…
Mine looks like this now:
I’d say the more primitive unwraps you got up there are probably much more precise, except (?) in the curved areas outside, since there’s not supposed to be a gap, the entire ball should be filled with one continuous image, like this one
Update with the correct template:
Getting there, guys, thanks to everybody for their input! This is invaluable to me 
It may look stretched in the UV space, but the faces are put in the correct places and sizes, It should not look stretched in the model, as I can see.
All right. I’m rearranging the vertices on the new template atm, so it won’t be in vain
Yeah, I did this in order not to have visible seams (which you could achieve by blurring the edges on the image texture), otherwise , you will have to be precise in your UV manipulation 
The manufacturer has already told me that “imperfections in the seam areas are possible” which usually translated directly to “it’ll be a mess anyway”, so my behind is covered
I should actually compensate you for your help, since you practically did most of the work for me. DM me if that’s of interest to you - I run a business and understand the value of your help.
Thanks! I’ll have to refuse compensation, though: I see the limited support I can offer as opportunity to learn and to contribute to the community, but the offer is appreciated 
