Making a 3D globe

[lkr241]

I've tried using an image prop of a globe to make a 3D earth in a drawing I'm doing. It works in front view and side view, but it doesn't work in any axon view. Is there another way to make a sphere look like the earth other than an image prop, or can you tell me what i'm doing wrong on my image prop that it foreshortens when I look at it in any kind of axonometric view?

 

[zoomer]

In VW, Image Props, to follow the Camera, will rotate around Z axis only.

(Which usually makes sense for cut out people or plants, even for slight bird eye views)

In 3D Apps like e.g. Cinema4D they can rotate about all axes by default.

 

(In C4D I had to lock mine to Z axis only manually for my purposes)

 

So an image prop may not the best solution for your purpose.

An option would be a 3D mesh globe with earth texture applied that you

may find on google warehouse or somewhere else, in a 3D format that

VW can import.

 

Edited April 26 by zoomer

[Kevin K]

@lkr241 This work for ya?  Feel free to tweak any materials. 

Consider it an early Christmas present 🙂

 

-Santa 🙂

 

 

World Globe v2024.vwx

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

This may help  I don't really know that much about VW texture mapping, but this is a VW's 3D file with texture file.  I can't get it to close, but I am sure someone else can help.  File enclosed.

 

VW EARTH.vwx

 

[Kevin K]

@lkr241 Oh, my bad...I didnt read your post carefully enough. You wanted just an earth as a texture instead of more of a map..

Perhaps you can still use it and texture map it with a different texture..??

[Jeff Prince]

I've always been partial to globes with a bit of raised relief myself...

 

Just make a Vectorworks sphere.

Then, make a texture from an image.  The best results use an image made from equirectangular projection.

Finally, texture the sphere using spherical mapping.

The trick to accurately scaling and placing the texture involves Pi and the length of a 90 degree arc based on your model size.

 

The previous examples here by @Kevin K and @VIRTUALENVIRONS may be salvageable in that regard, I don't know where they got their textures.

 

And yes, I did do it in Vectorworks...

 

Edited April 26 by Jeff Prince

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

How do you close a spherical map in VW's?    Scaling did not seem to work?

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

I got these maps off the NASA website several years ago, 2016 or so.  They include the Hi clouds, etc.  You might think the first one was done with the AI Visualizer, but just C4D.

 

They are/were Lo res or Hi res.  No reason why they could not be used in VW's.

 

If you notice continental U.S.A. they have light maps of the cities and towns.

 

 

Edited April 26 by VIRTUALENVIRONS

[Kevin K]

Paul

in reference to you query about mapping and closing a texture map to an object, like a sphere,  I have found you need to do a little math.

Meaning, you need to know the exact circumstance of the object, then match that to the width of the image….if that makes sense. If you are having trouble getting it to work perhaps send me a direct message with the object and the image and I can have a go, then explain how it works.

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

Hi Kevin,

How are things?  I just wanted to give  @lkr241 something to work with.  The texture was the critical part.  The models above involve more than one texture map, but they all come from the NASA website.

 

Thanks for your offer, I can always count on you.

 

I have reacquainted myself with VW texture mapping to a point,  I can do the basics, but there is really no point for me to learn more.

 

regards.....Paul

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

15 minutes ago, Kevin K said:

perhaps send me a direct message with the object and the image and I can have a go, then explain how it works.

Just thinking Kevin, why don't you do a tutorial on this for the Forum, I can't be the only one who would be interested.

[Kevin K]

Paul

Sadly, tutorials are above my pay grade 🙂

That said, if anyone had a specific problem procuring this, I would be happy to chime in.

[LavenderGardens]

19 hours ago, Jeff Prince said:

I've always been partial to globes with a bit of raised relief myself...

 

Just make a Vectorworks sphere.

Then, make a texture from an image.  The best results use an image made from equirectangular projection.

Finally, texture the sphere using spherical mapping.

The trick to accurately scaling and placing the texture involves Pi and the length of a 90 degree arc based on your model size.

 

The previous examples here by @Kevin K and @VIRTUALENVIRONS may be salvageable in that regard, I don't know where they got their textures.

 

And yes, I did do it in Vectorworks...

 

Beautiful work.  How did you make your board showing the three views of Earth on the star field?  Is that Vectorworks too?

[lkr241]

Okay!  Thanks for all the input.  I ended up making my own texture and putting it on a sphere.  Here's what it looks like.  I'm still working a little on the scale, but otherwise....

Globe.vwx

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

Looks great.  Good work on the texture.  What texture map did you use?

[zoomer]

20 hours ago, VIRTUALENVIRONS said:

How do you close a spherical map in VW's?

 

That is why I had searched for an already textured Mesh Globe.

Something like a 3DS, which VW can import.

 

Usually the Mesh keeps the initial Mapping.

(At least VW always resets it when you try to edit the Mesh)

 

But in a 3D App I would also have tried a simple Cylindrical Mapping.

Which should work if you have a distorted rectangular Map.

(Like a world "map")

 

 

[Jeff Prince]

2 hours ago, LavenderGardens said:

Beautiful work.  How did you make your board showing the three views of Earth on the star field?  Is that Vectorworks too?

 

Thank you, that was just a quickie mocked up in Affinity Photo.  I exported rendered images from Vectorworks, imported into Affinity Photo, added some outer glow to simulate an atmosphere/get them to pop off the background, and added a background and text.  You could do the same in Affinity Designer or the equivalent Adobe products.  I converted my workflow to Affinity from Adobe due to the subscription plan offered by Adobe at the time.

 

2 hours ago, lkr241 said:

Okay!  Thanks for all the input.  I ended up making my own texture and putting it on a sphere.  Here's what it looks like.  I'm still working a little on the scale, but otherwise....

Globe.vwx 68.8 MB · 0 downloads

 

That's pretty good.  The problem is you used a map using Mercator projection that does not include the entire surface of the earth.

Here is the image you used in your texture:

 

 

 

And here is what you actually need per my original example... an equirectangular projection.  Note the difference?

1. It includes the entirety of the earth's surface

2. It uses the projection compatible with spherical mapping.

*** This image is not in the correct proportions, it is an illustrative example for the purpose of discussion, go grab an image from a source you trust.  I picked this because the graphic style matches the one you posted and would allow people to focus on the difference in projection.

 

This is basically what a globe would look like if you mounted a camera to a tripod focused on the equator and rotated it, ie cylindrical projection or in cartography... Equirectangular or Equidistant Cylindrical.  If you use any other type of projection, it's going to fail when using a spherical mapper.  I encourage everyone perplexed by this thread to read up on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equirectangular_projection or you could google "flat earth" 🙂

 

You can source accurate textures from NASA at the blue marble collection:

https://visibleearth.nasa.gov/collection/1484/blue-marble?page=1

Edited April 27 by Jeff Prince

[zoomer]

44 minutes ago, zoomer said:

(Like a world "map")

 

 

Something like this ?

 

https://blenderartists.org/uploads/default/optimized/4X/5/0/2/5029a48052f6f91a399a41dcd1004adf854b17ea_2_1380x690.jpeg

 

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

The NASA Maps (Blue Marble) have been there for a long time. (2002).  They are great and you can use more than one.  They are registered to overlay.  

 

If you notice the clouds.  That map came from the Blue Marble collection and is intended to be used with any of the day or night maps.

 

The blue hue is coloured light with radius decay.

 

 

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

Although I am a novice rendering person in Vectorworks, just enough to understand it, I was curious about the most basic of texture mapping functions.  Wrapping a sphere.  This seemed so odd.

 

Did a little digging.  First of all, used Surface UV's as opposed to Spherical mapping.   So, both these spheres have the same texture, same attributes, except the left sphere is larger.  The one on the right has the texture accurately mapped.  

 

It appears VW's requires either the texture be scaled to the object (feature size),  or the object scaled to the texture.  

 

Can anyone else shed some light on this.  Is there a command I am not seeing?

 

 

[Jesse Cogswell]

Texture mapping in Vectorworks isn't the most friendly, even with the newish Surface UV tools.  You are mostly correct.  When you set up the texture, there is a section of the dialog box marked Size.  This refers to the width of the texture.  In this case, this wants to be the circumference of the sphere that you've made.  If you don't know the exact width of the image, but want to instead specify the height or some other piece of image itself, you can click on the Set By Image button and draw a line over the image and specify what the length of that line.  Vectorworks will use that to compute the width/size.

 

However, even if you don't set this, you can still "scale" the texture on an object by object basis (but only symmetrically, you can't stretch the texture or change its aspect ratio).  When you apply the texture to an object and open that object's Render tab in the Object Info Palette, you will see a Scale parameter and a slider.  You can then change the scale of the texture for that object.  This means that you could have one Earth texture, but apply it to different sized globes, though you will need to compute what the scale difference between the object and the texture.

 

There is currently no option to automatically scale the textures to fit the object.  A script could be written to do so, and it's a feature on a number of my plug-ins, but the Vectorscript texture commands are pretty limited, and I think it might be too difficult to write a catch-all since there's no way to specify faces of objects in VS.  The auto size on my mine are written very specifically to the objects, and they are mostly extruded rectangles, so the computation is dead simple.

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

@Jesse Cogswell

I also noticed that you can scale an object to a texture.    

 

I set the feature size to the width of the texture, 50 inches.  Then I applied it and set to UV's.  Set the scale 1:1.  Then adjust the size of the object to the texture.

 

Granted this is only useful when the object geometry scale is not critical.

[Claes Lundstrom]

On 4/27/2024 at 7:15 PM, Jeff Prince said:

 

 

*** This image is not in the correct proportions, it is an illustrative example for the purpose of discussion, go grab an image from a source you trust.  I picked this because the graphic style matches the one you posted and would allow people to focus on the difference in projection.

 

This is basically what a globe would look like if you mounted a camera to a tripod focused on the equator and rotated it, ie cylindrical projection or in cartography... Equirectangular or Equidistant Cylindrical.  If you use any other type of projection, it's going to fail when using a spherical mapper.  I encourage everyone perplexed by this thread to read up on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equirectangular_projection or you could google "flat earth" 🙂

 

You can source accurate textures from NASA at the blue marble collection:

https://visibleearth.nasa.gov/collection/1484/blue-marble?page=1

Yes the bottom picture looks reasonable right, though it was a bit too low res, so I pumped it up with AI. 

 

 

Globe.vwx