SphericalDistort

A picture tells a thousand words, so here's three thousand:

Before	After (pos. radius)	After (neg. radius)

As you can see, SphericalDistort distorts the heightfield as if it were on a sphere.

When you select the 'Extensions→SphericalDistort→Apply spherical distortion' option, you will be asked to enter the sphere radius, which is measured in kilometres. Regarding the radius:

• The default value is the radius of Earth (6400km).
• A negative value will create an inner-sphere effect, or can be used to un-do a positive distortion.
• You should not use radii smaller in magnitude than about 4x the largest side-length of your map, as heightfields tend to look a bit silly when tilted too far (see screenshots above).

I hacked the source for the SphericalDistort plugin to allow for limiting the curvature in the x,y, or at some specified radius. This allows for 'pieces' of a sphere to be generated kind of like a cookie cutter. The option is available using the 'Extensions→SphericalDistort→Apply spherical distortion (extended options)' menu option.

Here's the heightmap:

Here's a terrain screenshot:

This plugin doesn't currently allow removing the surrounding terrain edges, but will some day (see to-do list).

If the terrain is converted into a poly mesh it would then be as simple as using poly editing tool like Maya, Max, Lightwave, or Blender to cut out the pieces and stitch them together into a sphere.

• Run in L3DT's worker thread.
• Make last used settings persistent.
• Export clipped area.
• Set MAPFLAG_INVALID for TN, LM and TX (if UseLM enabled).

2009/03/26

• Changed function arguments to VarID_hvars from VarID_maps.
• Updated to Zeolite v2.7.1.

2008/12/03

• Added support for 'undo'.

2006/11/21

• Fixed fault with variable renaming in extended version.

2006/11/16

• Changed to include Tillot's modifications.

2006/10/23

• Changed radius from metres to kilometres.
• Distort the water map too.
• Updated MAPFLAG_MODIFIED for HF & WM, so maps are saved after distortion.
• Released with L3DT v2.4b build 5.

2006/10/22

• Released.