Stupid Question - Rotating Spheres

[RArcher]

This is probably a really stupid question, but I cannot see how to rotate a sphere.  All trees etc. that are imported have rotate dialog's that can be modified, but not a sphere object?  Am I missing something or am I just blind?

[cyphyr]

No your not blind.
You cant rotate planets, or spheres. Hopefully this is fixable in a forthcoming release.
richard

[Matt]

Spheres and planets are a special type of object in TG. They do not use UV coordinates in the current version... their texture coordinates are all in world space, so would not be affected by any rotation or repositioning of the object. The only thing rotation would affect is the geometry, but a rotated sphere is still a sphere so you won't see any difference. If there were separate scale factors in XYZ then this would be more useful.

Matt

[RArcher]

Ahh, I see, sort of.  What I have done is texture a lot of spheres (image map shader - spherical projection) and I had hoped to be able to easily rotate them around and position them somewhat randomly but it would seem that isn't currently possible with the internal sphere object.  I guess the solution would be to create a sphere object in an alternate program and then import it in.  Attached is what I was doing and it looks fine, I just would have rather had the balls slightly more random.

[old_blaggard]

Very realistic lighting and texturing nonetheless. I suppose you could try reconstructing your textures instead of importing objects, but it sounds like that's more trouble than it's really worth at this point.

[Mohawk20]

Can't you use a translate shader on the image map shader to translate the textures around the spheres?

[rcallicotte]

This is so cool, RArcher.   

[Seth]

yeah ! cool shot !

[RArcher]

Thanks for the suggestion Mohawk, but as far as I can tell if you use the translate shader, it just distorts the image map, and does not rotate it around the sphere.  The only solution that seems to work right now is to create the objects in another program and properly UV Map them.  Then you can import them in and rotate them any way you want and the textures move properly with the object.  A lot more work this way, but the end goal should be reachable now that I've taken a crash course in how to UV map a sphere in Wings3d.

Thanks for the comments on the image everyone.  There will be better ones coming eventually.

[bobbystahr]

Spheres and planets are a special type of object in TG. They do not use UV coordinates in the current version... their texture coordinates are all in world space, so would not be affected by any rotation or repositioning of the object. The only thing rotation would affect is the geometry, but a rotated sphere is still a sphere so you won't see any difference. If there were separate scale factors in XYZ then this would be more useful.

Matt

I'm assuming this also applies to the Plane object...having a devil of a time trying to figure out how to make a Plane perpendicular as opposed to it's default horizontal position.. ...

[jo]

Hi bobby,

I'm assuming this also applies to the Plane object...having a devil of a time trying to figure out how to make a Plane perpendicular as opposed to it's default horizontal position.. ...

I think that's because it has a sucky UI :-). Or rather a UI that's not easy to understand if you aren't up on 3D maths. It's the first time I've tried it, I'm having trouble figuring it out completely.

Regards,

Jo

[bobbystahr]

I did manage, I should say, to get it perpendicular but then I couldn't rotate it around the World Y to get it in the position I needed it in the scene. I believe the trick to where I got was type 90 in the top middle box of the 2 lines of input boxes.. ...