however the poles still have warping issues. On that video I cant replicate it exactly how he does, there are no holes once its textured to merge. I’ve tried other ways too but still warping on the poles.
why not just unmap the uv sphere to a simple cylindrical ( sphere projection)
then make sure that the map used is in a 2:1 ratio ( i use power of 2 size images )
this example is using a small 360 segment 180 rings
a test grid i use , and a “blue” mars
now there is a small bit of distortion at the southpole do to only 360 divisions
that last ring is a pain . The point right the pole and that one ring .
as to warping at the poles
you NEED to use a map that IS in simple cylindrical mapping
and i KNOW for a fact that Steve’s map on the NOAA site IS
the more divisions in the UV sphere and rings the better
using a sphere that is 1440x720 ( 4 divisions per degree ) will work good for even a small maps used in the above example
both were 4096x2048 px
dealing with gigabyte sized texturing…
that might be me
and a few others over at “Celestialmatters”
by gigabit mapping do you mean :
something like my 24 GIG map of venus with a 6 gig normalmap
Yep, likely that was you then… I recall reading this year or so back - was quite interesting and allowed to gather some bits like how-to and what’s-that-all-about.
Thanks for clarifying differences between different projections.
Since initially mentioned by OP tutorial suggests Follow Active Quads unwrap i tend to think that result would be the same as if the Cylindrical was used since if done properly unwrap is all quads. Maybe warped plane is better precision wise however some added loops around pole make stretching less prominent anyways.
To be frank i certainly do lack a knowledge in both astronomy and 3d art however what i do know is Blender would choke if there’s 30GB data on the object in the shot. If that is some fly-over or what not i assume one might use appropriately distorted plane and map just a part of such image on that patch; move texture, not the Camera.
Is he going to measure distance between some craters using Blender render? Well, he did not tell, but i assume - no.
This is why i am a bit reluctant to the idea of ideal and precise mapping of this 8k JPG(!).
