Model a globe with height

I would like to model a globe with the real heights of the mountains and oceans. I need this for milling it with my cnc machine ? So far I only milled landscapes (www.3d-relief.com) but not globes.
I do not know how to bend my world terrain around a ball, I know the world is not that round as a ball but maybe not to difficult for the start. Any help would be really nice !

I see 2 options, using warp or a displacement modifier.

First one (assuming you use 2.5, 3DCursor at 0,0,0 - object inserted at cursor):
Create a grid (alt+a)>grid - leave it 10x10
Select the grid and move it by 1 along the z axis (<g>, <z>, <1>, <enter>)
Go to edit mode and select all (<tab>, <a>)
go to front view <num 1>
Use warp (<shitft+w>) and warp it 180° (<180><enter>)
go to side view <num 3>
Warp it 360° (<whift+w><360><enter>)

Now the planar grid should be a sphere with the 3dcursor at 0,0,0 at the center.
Next use this method in analogy to warp your existing planar earth.

Second one:
Create a high density uv sphere or iconsphere with a gazillion vertices.
UV unwrap it and use a heightmap for displacement, then accodring to the gray values in the texturemap (0-255) your mesh sphere will be displaced accordingly.

You can also combine those two as spheres aren´t fun to unwrap usually =)
Make a plane highly subdivided, unwrap, create displacement, apply displacement, warp the plane.

hth

there is a script that can do this using NASA Latest data but function of required precision
and might be very big !

interested or not?

the latest high precision data for the moon is around 600 MB i tthink
for earth don’t know !

happy 2.5

salutations

i think, the most often used method to use a displacement in blender is the combination with the multiresolution modifier.
it makes the handling much easier.

first generate a uv sphere with quite few vertices, uv unwrap it and add a multiresolution modifier. then setup your heightmap and displacement modifier (maybe you have to process your image to match your unwrap-method or the other way round, i would say, it depends on the heightmap you got)
by increasing the number of divisions in the multiresolution modifier, you can adjust the resolution of your displacement, just play around with it till you get the results you want…