Flow along sphere?

Is it possible to flow objects along a surface- a sphere? I extracted the surface and tried unrolling it but coudn’t because it’s doubly curved.

Hi Courtney- you can flow to a sphere, but as the flowed objects get closer to the poles, there will be increasing distortion. If possible, keep the objects near the equator.

-Pascal

Thanks Pascal!

You can choose appropriate tool based on what you would like to flow your pattern or elements. In the image below, I used FlowAlongSrf on the left and PanelingTools on the right. In FlowAlongSrf, you need to have similar source and target surfaces and also create the full pattern you would like to flow on the flat source surface. It is a good choice when you flow a unique pattern or textures (for example wrap the world map around a sphere. PanelingTools works well with repeated patterns or ones that gradually change, etc. It gives you better control over the exact locations of the wrapped geometry and does not need a source reference surface.

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I am trying to wrap a world map around the sphere, then have continents extrude. I’ve imported vectors of the continents from Adobe Illustrator and did a FlowAlongSrf to the sphere and it seems to work well up until I try to trim the curves to the surface. Some of the remaining surface looks like it’s missing. I am also trying to extrude the surface by doing an OffsetSrf but instead of a clean extrusion or offset surface, it spikes out in odd places. Any advice would be GREATLY appreciated! I am a bit of a noob if you couldn’t already tell. :wink:

It might work better if you Extrude first, then FlowAlongSrf.

Thank you so much Rajaa! That did it! :slight_smile:

Do you know if it’s possible to FlowAlongSrf, or something similar but for multiple surfaces?

I have to put Longitude and Latitude Lines on the world globe that will be Boolean Difference to the sphere and continents. Right now it will only wrap around the sphere part, which I understand.

Are the multiple surfaces on a single polysurface? What are the tolerances you need? Can you give an example?