I am trying to use an image of a world map as a displacement map for a sphere. Later I want to export the mesh for 3D printing, with the continents looking like engraved into a sphere. I am new to Blender.
This is the image I am currently using:
This image is basically the "Land/Ocean map" from this Blender tutorial, just with an erode/dilate filter applied. Because this guy is using it as a texture in Blender I am assuming it is a suitable projection.
What I tried so far:
- Create a UV sphere
- Add a Subsurf modifier with 7 subdivisions
- Add a Displace modifier with this image as texture and a strength of 0.02
The problem is now that while Europe and Africa are squeezed horizontally...
... Australia's east coast is extremely stretched out.
What am I doing wrong? Or is there a completely different, better way?