Ironclad, how did you generate your planet textures?

from Sins Forums

As they are now, they consist of 3 equatorial squares, and 2 polar squares. Fine.
But i can see wierd edges here and there, suggesting that you generated this image somehow, or split it somehow, rather than actually creating it from scratch like that (lol).

So i ask, how? How do i transform a normal square texture into a 5-box map like here? Ive been googling, photoshoppin, etc. I cant figure it out. If i could just use a square texture i could, you know expand the polar regions so it looks okay when the ingame sphere-mapping pinches the poles together.
But it seems that only the gasgiants use this mapping method. Why not the other planets? Anyway to change that? Is it the planetmesh itself that has those UV things?

modding
7,677 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Adding to the above: Please Ironclad, release any texture mapping tool that may have been used to make the top and bottom circles match the edges on the block in the middle :) :D (it's takes too long to do it by hand)...
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
No special tools were used, just a normal unwrap. We chose the cylinder + 2 pole method to avoid the typical pole pinching seen in most games. Just takes a bit of work to smooth out the seams but nothing too bad.
Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
I painted the textures by hand, took forever...
the uv's lay in the planet texture.
The seams require TLC
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
But IC, the gas giants use normal "pinching" textures, why cant we do the same with other planets?
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
UV map them yourself and you can.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
the design of the gas giants was done with pinching textures because we were going to export the possibilty of having the gas on the planets move around
you need a standard cylindrical unwrap to do so. That's why they're using a diff uv mapping set