Another word about the size. I wrote in my first post that the half of the picture goes "to the back side" (which then, while rotating comes sometime to the front :-)) ).
What I didn't write is that your picture will be stretched. In my two examples you can see this stretching: to get the sphere you have to have a square. But, it will be stretched to make "the back side" of the sphere - as you can see by obtaining the pattern on my spheres.
I hope, this will help you...
- rectangle-1-1.gif
- 178 KB
sphere from 400x400 picture with squares
- rectangle-1-2.gif
- 184 KB
sphere from 400x400 picture with 25x50 rectangles
by: brundoPosted on 2009-08-01 at 23:34:42ID: 24997873
It is normal that you have to have bigger picture because a half of it goes to the back side of the globe :-))
About colors... I suppose, your 2D globe is in RGB mode, where over 16 million color is available. Animation has to be saved in GIF format, which allows up to 256 colors (incl. transparency). What happens, you can see by trying Image > Mode > Indexed, and then choosing optimum palette with 255 colors and normal dithering (but only trying, please undo it...). You can try with 63 colors, too.
When making spinning globe, define number of colors 255. You can try with 0 as number of colors (=RGB), enjoy very smooth animation, and then convert it to indexed mode. This should be the same.
Globe will render to fit on dark surface - nice borders you can see by defining backgound color as black and then unckeck transparent background.
If you need transparent background of the globe and you need to put it on a light surface, there is a workout, too...