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.