How to create a map projection for CC Sphere Mapping

[Michael Szalapski]

CC Sphere will not continuously rasterize vector lines. It will need to be a high resolution rasterized graphic.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[David Fuchs]

Fair enough, I’ll have to make it raster. The issue with creating a projection still stands, though.

[Michael Szalapski]

You mentioned that you had already found some tutorials and, since you’ll be using a raster image after all, I figured you were already set. What tutorials have you found and what about them isn’t working for you?

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[David Fuchs]

Ah, sorry. The tutorial that Cow forumgoers have linked is https://www.maxoncomputer.com/tutorial_detail.asp?tutorialID=54

But that won’t fly for line art.

[David Fuchs]

Unfortunately those don’t really help. This isn’t a map.

Here’s the base design:
https://i.imgur.com/qEVDE.png

Here’s what it looks like thrown onto CC Sphere:

https://i.imgur.com/5H5js.png

It’s obviously fine around the center, but towards the edges it becomes warped. Any attempt to manually distort it by trial-and-error seems exercise in futility (tried lens distortions, mesh warps, etc.)

View post on imgur.com

[Jens Enqvist]

You could take a look at our CFX Sphere Utilities, especially Mappit although it might be difficult if your art covers a large portion of the sphere. Perhaps adding the elements one by one would work. Anyhow, take a look.

[Mato Kokotic]

Let’s try a different approach:

In Photoshop make square image of desired map.
Then

Filter>Distort>Spherize -100% (minus)

and save new map.

In AE make comp with double horizontal size of your map (height stays same), import your map on timeline, double its horizontal size too,then apply

Effect>Distort>Polar Coordinates – Polar to Rect 100%

Adjust vertical position and vertical scale as desired and add a solid beneath to fill the gap. Precompose. Use this composition as a map for CC Sphere. Rotate on x axis 90 and that’s it.

3626_equirectangularmap.rar.zip

Example is lowres, png was small

[David Fuchs]

Tried that as well, as at least as far as I can tell it wasn’t suitable for something you were trying to wrap around the sphere–it just tried to make the design “orbit” it instead.

[Mato Kokotic]

I don’t get what do you mean. In attached projedt it WAS mapped on a sphere (on the HALF of sphere (hemisphere?)).

Isn’t that what you want to achieve?

Have you tried attached project?