Hi all!
I am attempting to project an image onto a 3d sphere, then cut it into 3 or 4 equal parts, unroll the ball and flatten it as a skin that I can print onto a vinyl and apply onto a real spherical object. Any suggestions on how to achieve this? I have already managed to project an image with lightbox, just need to know how to do the rest. Thanks.
This might seem like a simple thing but it’s not really. There is probably a dedicated program somewhere for what you want but in the 3D modeling world I think you’ll need to use UV mapping to get from a 3D sphere to a 2D image. But with UVs the main problem is distortion of the image. Most UVs have distortion somewhere which is fine on the model but looks bad on the 2D image. Think of a map of the world and how it has to be stretched towards the poles.
The only solution I can think of is to use segments like an orange. This is basically how paper covered globes are made and ensures that the pieces fit together on the sphere without stretching. I’ve attached a sphere ZTL which has UVs like this. Because ZBrush uses square texture maps the segments are spread about a bit. If you are going to use this then you’d better try out a simple texture first to see that it applies to a sphere how you want.
If you divide the sphere to get more resolution you will then be able to polypaint it with your image. You’d then convert the polypaint to a texture map before exporting the map to print onto vinyl.
