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  • UV Mapping – Texturing a sphere with an image sequence (n00b alert!)

    Posted by Weston Jones on June 17, 2009 at 7:12 pm

    Dear imaginative bovines,

    I have what I believe to be a fairly simple texturing question (i pity those trying to texture organic shapes!)

    Essentially I have 30 second video clips (1920x1080pxl) as image sequences that I want to texture spheres with in Cinema 4d 10. I’m making planets. (sorry, but I can’t stand that “pixar” look achieved by painting)

    When I apply image files as a texture in the color channel, the mapping is really bizarre and stretches in the wrong places (im sure this is because i need to do some work on it!). Essentially I want to do the inverse process of taking a map of the Earth and place it on a globe.

    This photo shows a good comparison of properly vs improperly mapped spheres: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UV_mapping_checkered_sphere.png Imagine the sphere on the right started with a 1920×1080 image of a checkerboard. How is it mapped this well? However, I would not want my camera to fly over the top and see my textures scrunched.

    I have found some info and tutorials online, but they are either for older versions or not particularly relevant.

    Any ideas or sources/tutorials I can look at? I am new to 3D and I’m trying to conceptualize how this process works…any help would be fantastic.

    Thanks!

    Weston Jones replied 16 years, 10 months ago 2 Members · 6 Replies
  • 6 Replies
  • John Hammond

    June 22, 2009 at 12:28 pm

    Hi,

    When you create a Primitive, say a sphere, C4D creates a decent set of UVW coordinates for you. (It is in the object manager as a tag, click it to see the options.) If you leave it on the default UVW it should work fine with your primitive. But it is good to try out other types like planar, cylindrical etc.

    Try creating a new material, and in the luminance channel select,say tiles. You can see how it gets mapped to the sphere quite nicely.

    Note – sometimes the texture will look different in the viewport to the final render, so its good to render to check this.

    Another note: to get your texture to map nicely onto the sphere, with no seams or stretching, you might need to alter your video texture, say in after effects, to remove seems or warp it..

  • Weston Jones

    June 23, 2009 at 12:49 am

    Interesting thoughts, I will try them out soon.

    One question:

    If I were to prepare my footage in after effects to better wrap around the sphere, should I first export a 2D UV map to use as a reference? Any ideas on how this process works or correct terms that I can search the help for?

    Thanks!

    Ben

  • John Hammond

    June 25, 2009 at 7:49 pm

    https://www.maxoncomputer.com/tutorial_detail.asp?tutorialID=54

    check out that link, I haven’t read past the first few lines but it seems pretty much exactly what you need.

    Seems you don’t need to use after effects, but instead use C4D to create the warped texture ..and I guess render that out and use it as your map – Hey I’m learning here too. Let me know if it works out

    John

  • John Hammond

    June 25, 2009 at 7:53 pm

    Ignore what I just said about using c4d to do it.. Just read it and they use photoshop for a still image.

  • Weston Jones

    June 25, 2009 at 8:10 pm

    Oh my god thanks this looks like it’s gonna work perfectly!

    I’ll try it in a bit and let you know. I’ll post some before and after photos.

    I’m pretty sure Aftereffects doesn’t have the same set of filters, but if I can achieve the same process in AE that would be best so I could see how it works on all my footage.

    Either way I can just batch the images sequence in photoshop.

    YES!

  • Weston Jones

    June 27, 2009 at 12:59 am

    Oh yeah that works just fine.

    Edited the images in photoshop and batched them…didn’t take long to finish the batch at all.

    Although AE has the tools mentioned in that tutorial, they work differently and yield poor results. There may be a way to do this in AE, but it exceeds my skillz.

    I will post some before and after photos soon.

    thanks again!

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