Seems like the rock objects UV is a little whacked in the polar region. Textures don't work right. I noticed this before trying to use PBR Materials in the past, but forgot about it when trying to do some basic coral. Thought I'd make note of it here.
I tried subdivided, or not, as well as 10 - 64 - 256 - 512 - 1024 -2048 faces. Seems it just out of my control.
The texture coordinates are in 3D; they are not UVs. If you treat them as UVs then you're only using the X and Y coordinates; in other words you are doing a projection along the Z axis.
So wait. But it's a spheroid? How would one go about proportionate texturing from image? Plan Y for example will just present the same problem on it's terminator with the ground.
Might not even be possible, as spherical projection needs a central location for each rock. What I sometimes do with image maps is mix several projections as good and bad as it goes.
Hmmm true. But with how primitive the rock object is, especially with low faces you'd think a UV could be easily baked on the fly like mesh displacing.
Also true. But that's for Matt to implement.