3d scan of imperfect globe to a 2d Equirectangular Projection

[Daniel Gimenez]

Wow, I am trully fascinated how many messages went into a simple projecting issue.

You know as a 3D artist I have to deal with this all the time, scanned objects have bad topology and their UVs are all over the place.
I know this might be a bit late but to me the problem is simple:

-You have one object where the texture looks nice when wrapped but the UVs are a mess.
-You can make an object that is exactly the same but with a better UV layout. For example in Blender you can create an UVSphere and select automatic UVs, you will get an equirectangular projection.
-Should you also want to transfer to the new sphere also geometrical deformations I would go over to zbrush to project the geometry to the new perfect sphere, but I believe there is a way of doing it in blender using one of the modifiers that changes the shape of one object to a target, thus you would en up with two identical spheres but one having correct UVS.
-If the objects match up, with a program like xNormal you can project the texture of the first object to the new sphere, and voila.

I hope this helps a little bit at least, maybe I am not getting the real problem,

Daniel.

[Vigilus]

@ Daniel

Thanks for the response!

Your approach seems to be right on target as far as I can tell on initial observation.
I'm going to look into this path. I've had this issue before the eyes of the blender artists community, polycount and this forum. So far the problem remains unsolved and I have my handy new christmas gifts in hand, Blender for Dummies and Mr. Blain's Blender Graphics book. I keep getting that it's really simple yet nobody seems to know how it's done. I'm going to play with your idea, thanks for the new software mentions!

[Vigilus]

I haven't looked at this post in a long time. After rereading this haphazard search, I never updated the solution I eventually found. Sorry about that! I found this guy who had a program that would take many, many pictures of a virtual object. Then the pictures are easily mapped onto an equirectangular projection. After a week of emails and sending one file, he had it perfectly mapped out with almost no detail loss whatsoever. This process has had a few years to grow since then, so check out it.