# eighth of a sphere with extremely high face count

I want to create an eighth of a sphere with extremely high face count

I want about ~127 Million Faces.

the problem is that it takes a huge amount of memory, and creating an entire UV sphere and cutting faces out is too wasteful.

My question is: Is there a way to create slice of a sphere without creating the entire sphere?

Regarding memory - I have 32GB of ram, is it enough for this task?

Edit: I've been asked regarding my motivation for this strange task. I want to create an image of part of a ball in the size of the earth to simulate how things reflect on it in some conditions (angles, altitude etc...) and how the hight from the surface influence the roundness of the visible area, the exact amount of faces is, as a result, assuming every 1sqr km is a face (approximately, in the equator).

My calculation was:

• Earth circumference: 40,075KM (segments)
• Earth diameter: 25,484KM (rings)

So since in UV sphere Segments X Rings = Faces we get 1021271300 faces for the entire sphere. and one-eighth of that equals 127658912.5.

• Why do you need that many faces? – cegaton Jul 10 '18 at 18:34
• I want to create an image of part of a ball in the size of the earth to simulate how things reflect on it in some conditions and how the hight from the surface influence the roundness of the visible area, the exact amount of faces is as a result assuming every 1sqr km is a face – yossico Jul 10 '18 at 18:53
• @cegaton thanks for your question, I've answered in the above comment – yossico Jul 10 '18 at 18:54
• Please use the edit link at the bottom of your post, to clarify your question. – cegaton Jul 10 '18 at 18:57

Well this all sounds highly suspicious and unnecessary, but if you must.

Start with a Bezier Circle object. After adding it enter edit mode and change all handle types to either Free or Aligned.

Afterwards erase the necessary vertex so only one quarter remains.

Once done add a Screw modifier to it and change the axis to $Y$, and adjust the angle to 90º.

You can now non destructively adjust the Subdivison levels on both directions, either from the Screw Modifier steps parameter or from the curve resolution..

You can maintain a lower level for both for viewport display purposes so it doesn't slow down to much, and higher levels for final rendering.

## Edit:

You can achieve a similar result as above replacing the bezier curve circle by a single vertex mesh, then using two screw modifiers on different axis, overcoming the limits of curve resolution.

This has the added benefit of yielding a mesh base object (which is more flexible and better supported) and it is easier to control since all parameters can be controlled from the modifier stack

• Wow, I have so much more to learn... Amazing! Thanks – yossico Jul 10 '18 at 19:28
• There is a problem, The BezierCircle max resolution is 1024 do you think that subdivision will get the same effect? is there a different way? – yossico Jul 10 '18 at 19:57
• You can replace the bezier circle by a single point mesh then use two screw modifiers instead. You get a mesh object and full control directly from the modifier stack. Answer updated – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Jul 10 '18 at 21:48
• BTW, loved your opening "...highly suspicious and unnecessary..." – yossico Jul 16 '18 at 20:12