An Image/3D shapes over a sphere?

[James W. Johnson]

Hello, I am making a world map in vectorworks with a "grid" in the shape of a sphere under it. How would all you advanced users go about placing the continents over this grid? I have attached what I have now for you all to play around with...

I have no idea how to go about this, thanks for your help.

[islandmon]

Search the Forums for a few earlier postings related to mapping a texture/image to a spheric surface.

The easiest solution is with gores mapping. If you use Photoshop there's a plugin > Flexify which will help with the creation of the gores necessary for the texture mapping ( it will apply any image including a grid ).

VW uses NURBS surfaces for this purpose. The SphereObject included with VW will not map a surface texture... so don't bother with it. Create the NURBS>Gores instead.

It's a challenge ... on the bright side ... Google Earth took a few years to get it right ( compare the historic images for distortion : )

[Danielj1]

Islandmon, I just tried mapping a texture onto a sphere object and it worked with no problem. Perhaps you experienced this with a previous version?

Dan J.

[propstuff]

But did it "shrink" the texture/image at the poles to fit it in Dan?

[James W. Johnson]

I know a bit about texture maping and that would work fine for this purpose, but I am still curious how I would take a shape, say a continent shape, make it 3/4" thick then lay it over a sphere... That way I can get a good 3D render... its mostly a fun problem to figure out at this point... Thanks for all the help! That Photoshop plugin will most definitely come in handy.

James