Spherical Canvas

[Hungry Donner]

I imagine this is a long shot, but is anyone aware of an art program that allows you to work on a spherical “canvas” instead of a flat “canvas.” I do a lot of planet-wide map projects and for the past several years I’ve forced Google Earth down this road . . . it’s passable in most areas, and works very well in others, but it’s not what Google Earth is intended for. (And the final products are far from aesthetically pleasing.)

If the software has the ability to ‘unwrap’ the image as a traditional flat picture that would be great too. I am open to some sort of 3D applicable as long as I can still draw on the sphere itself.

[ravells]

You could do it in Photoshop CS4 extended...open a sphere.obj and paint on that directly.

[Hungry Donner]

Yowch, even the student edition is quite expensive.

Can you unwrap the sphere texture if you wish or is it stuck as an object? If I can unwrap it, so I have a standard flat image that can be easily shared, it's probably worth saving up for.

It's still nice to know I have options, thanks

[Ascension]

This sounds like a projections matter and the tech guys know more about that stuff than I do.