Hi All,

Haven't posted that many threads here (I do more reading than posting). I'm working on a game design that requires a deformable terrain mapped onto a large sphere (think Populous 3), but I have a problem choosing the terrain type.

I'm using Blender, and I can generate two types of sphere that I can use for this purpose - a UV Sphere or an Icosphere.

Now, the Icosphere is made up of equal triangles and every polygon on the surface is the same. This is ideal as it means that the entire sphere can be used as usabe terrain, however, applying a texture to specific areas of an icosphere is proving to be difficult.

On the other hand, the UV Sphere is made up of quads which is ideal for texturing, but the quad size stretches as the sphere approaches to "poles" at either end, which probably means that those areas will be unusable as terrain.

I have two images here as examples:


UV Sphere




Icosphere

My question is, are there any well-known techniques to apply a texture to specific areas of the icosphere and has anybody been successful with this? Or do I have to use the UV Sphere and isolate the stretched areas from gameplay?

Just to clarify, the kind of effect I am trying to achieve can also be seen in the game Sacraboar:




Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

when you are playing, is the camera vector always pointing dead-center on the sphere?
also assuming the sphere isnt flat, but more like a small spherical world

heres what i would do:
i would implement world curvature in a vertex shader, and keep the world big enough to fool anyone
problem solved