Using Maya 6 I am trying to create a simple planet to test my graphics engine. I made a poly sphere, told it to use triangles, and downloaded a texture. I then tryed to map the texture onto it using spherical projection. It looks great except for the poles. It looks like someone dug into it with thier fingernails. How do you fix such a problem? I also found these images in my search They look much more detailed. The author has split them into groups of 2, 8, 32, etc. seperate .dds images I have no idea how to go about mapping them though. Is there a name for the concept and perhaps a link to research? I have photoshop cs2 as well. So I could delete the ice portions around the poles, but I will probably run into this problem again later and would rather learn how to texture a sphere properly. [Edited by - brekehan on July 29, 2008 7:19:13 PM]

It'd be easier to evaluate if you provided the Maya file and texture.

I have been desperatly trying to create a model of the Earth to bring into my game engine for testing for about a week now.

The problem:
Maya Hardware - Distortion around the poles:




Maya Software - No distortion around the poles, but seams show up as green dotted lines:




I tryed all manner of texturing. From planar projection to spherical projection, and both while dividing up the sphere into parts. I cannot get this right!

I've been told to correct it in photoshop, however I have no idea how to do so.
I've been told to remap my UVs, however I have no idea how they "should" be mapped differently.

Can anyone give some good advice that will allow me to progress??

Here is the entire project with the textures for reference.

You need to uv unwrap the sphere to not get distortion, that way you can have more control where the seam will appear so you can remove it and/or make it less obvious.

Quote: Original post by Jarrod1937
You need to uv unwrap the sphere to not get distortion, that way you can have more control where the seam will appear so you can remove it and/or make it less obvious.

I've been told that on some other forums. However, I have no idea how one goes about "UV unwrapping" or correcting the problem.

I've been told one can export the UV map and/or 3d object into CS3, but I only have Photoshop CS2. I assume something magical happens there.

Googling for the answer turned out fruitless.
I only see empty links or those referring to the newest version of Maya.

If there was some way to flatten the faces at the poles, get that part of the texture into Photoshop CS2 and be able to edit it, that would be golden. But I don't see a way.

Can you be more specific about your suggestion?

I don't use maya so i can not vouch the for quality of these tutorials, but checkout:
1.)Tutorial 1
2.)Tutorial 2

Maya's help file (f1) may even have a tutorial for doing uv's.