UV unwrapping of sphere- complex problem

Support Basics & Interface
1

I want to apply a Mollweide projection map to a sphere: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mollweide_projection

It there any way to UV unwrap a sphere so that the Mollweide map image can be correctly applied to it? The reason this is important to me is I want to do scientific visualizations, and much astronomical data is only available in this format…

2

Sphere project? F6 after unwrap to see the options.

sphere_project.png1280×974 334 KB

3

Thank you… I will give it a try… I appreciate it!

4

Unfortunately the result is distorted… If anyone else has figured out how to map that specific type of topographic projection to a sphere I would love to see how you did it…

5

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16703380/Mollweide.blend

That would be my solution. Probably not super accurate - but close. You would need to adjust the UV’s slightly for different maps. I just mapped this flat and then scaled the horizontal lines along the x axis.

***edit

I got rid of the vertical stretching that I noticed in the first example. Here on layer 2 you will see the improved UV and you can compare between the sphere on layer 1 and 2.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16703380/Mollweide_2.blend

6

WOW- that really helped!!
There is a little distortion at the poles but its just about perfect
THANK YOU!

7

Please try the second blend. I was able to get rid of some of the vertical stretching. The poles are always going to have issues unfortunately. If you think about the map the areas around the poles are quite stretched.