mapping pictures to a sphere or cylinder

Question

hi, i am developing an application where client can add his photos to appear on a sphere or ball or coffee cup and able to save them and give it for printing using flex. like itasveer.com site. i tried to use away3D but if the image is small it is stretched and added to sphere. i dont want it to strech instead the original image shud appear on the sphere. if it is added to cup it shud cover only the circular part it shud not add this to top and bottom. guide me how can i make it work. -thanks in advance-madhu

Answer 1

Here is a tutorial for making a picture into a cylinder. I know it is in flash but I was able to port it into flex quite easily. Essentially it takes a picture and rips it into strips and then (with a ton of math) puts them together to form a picture cylinder. This should help with the body of the coffee cup. There are other examples on the site for spherical photo galleries that may help (though very little) with turning a picture into a sphere.

http://www.flashandmath.com/advanced/rolls/cylin.html