New? texture lod problem.

I made a chair which the back cushion is a flattened sphere with a texture applied by planar mapping. It used to behave as expected, but since the last client upgrade, it has developed a n effect where a texture ring (gold, from the centre of the texture) appears when you are close, and flips off when you move away. The picture shows the view close-to (left x 0.5) and further away (right). It used to look like the right picture at all distances. So my question is whether anyone is aware of a change in the planar mapping to a sphere in the latest viewer? And, otherwise, what I can do to avoid this horrible flipping?



PS reward of one free chair to anyone who solves the problem.

Put a slight twist on the prim?

No idea, sorry. I always avoid applying planar mapping to non-planar surfaces.


My suggestion is remake your texture to fit the sphere properly with standard mapping. That's the only thing I know will always work.

Argent's suggestion of twisting the prim might do the trick, since it will increase the poly count. It might screw up your mapping, though, since it will change the way the sphere is sectioned. You'd have to experiment to find out.

Any hints on doing that transformation? Texture is made in Ultrafractal, which does have some transformation options. Anything else has to be Gimp.

Does GIMP have a polar coordinates function?

Twisting almost did it, but didn't reduce the ring enough. Polar coordinate transformation in Gimp seems to be the opposite of what I need. However, dimple did the trick ... the ring disappeared after dimple exceeded 0.5 and the cushion was still thick enough. So I win the free chair! Meanwhile, I will try to do it properly as Chosen suggests, if I can engineer the right transformation. Thanks everyone.

Finally worked out how to use the Gimp polar coordinate filter to get it to fit a sphere, so I can do it that way too. I guess I owe you all chairs after all.