Hello to all-knowing blender-heads!
How do I close the sides of the earth when using the solidify modifier?
thanks in advance for any help!
Enable Rim Fill option (this is enabled by default when you add the modifier)
Solidifier modifier wiki entry http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Modifiers/Generate/Solidify
Still no worky worky!
I’m using cycles, if that matters.
Hey Richard!
The RIM feature works with a mesh, I have a sphere with a earth spec map as factor to select between transparent and diffuse shader.
Any help is greatly appreciated!
Attach or post a link to your blend file
You can’t when using just a texture, you need real geometry.
I was afraid of that!
Thanks for your help.
So if not simply with the solidify modifier, how do I accomplish my goal?
How would one go about modeling the earth to give it some thickness.
Any ideas? Anyone? Anything?
Thank you in advance. BLEND ON! BLEND ON!
A “quick and dirty” method:
Get a world map in a vector format (.eps / .svg / .pdf / .ai etc.). For my example I unfortunately only had one with a distorted south polar region, which led to this strange result… Import that map as .svg into Blender and convert to mesh.
Create a plane with the same dimensions as the map mesh. Subdivide the plane a couple of times to get a dense topology.
Align plane and map mesh so that they are lying on top of each other in one of the views. Select the map mesh, shift select the plane and enter Edit Mode. “Knife Project” the map mesh onto the plane.
The newly cut faces in the plane (in the shape of the map) will be automatically selected. Invert the selection and just hit X to delete - this will get rid of any polygons that are not part of the world’s geography.
Add a Solidify modifier, two Simple Deform modifiers (to bend the world map into a spherical shape) and an Edge Split modifier and set the shading to smooth.
I can add a short video to show the process if need be.
