Earth

Earth. Our one and only planet. At least for now.

Am learning about UV Mapping. Its a technique that lets you take a picture and define exactly how to wrap it around an object.

First you take the object and "unwrap" it. For a sphere for example, you first need to create a seam around the equator, then when you unwrap you get two circles full of triangles. You take the image and lay it over the triangles. Then you adjust them to completely cover the image. When you wrap it again, it places the image onto the same spots on the 3D where the triangles originally came from. Ok, so its hard to describe - you have to see it to understand it. Or get someone who is better at describing it.

I took Google Maps, satellite view, grabbed a partial screen shot, and brought that into Blender. I wrapped it around the sphere. Not entirely successfully, you can see Africa looks a bit distorted. The image I had to Photoshop a bit, to remove the Google text and stuff. Although in my case its not Photoshop but a similar program called Pixelmator.

I also took another left and right pic to get 3D view. Doesn't work so well with stars in the background - they look very 2D.


This technique can be applied to much more complex shapes than a sphere. The most common one it is applied to is the human body. You can buy whole male and female body skins to wrap around your models. The better ones can be upwards of several hundred dollars, available at websites like TurboSquid. With amazing skin details, up to things like fingerprints.