GIMP Version: 2.8.14
Operating System: Windows
OS Version: win 10/ mint 16
GIMP Experience: Basic Level

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So I decided to make a grayscale sphere with holes in it, and wanted to add a ball of fire to the inside of the sphere. So far all I've been able to come up with is to manually cut and paste the insides of the holes to a new layer and to put the fire in between the face and background layers. Is there an easier way to do this? If I shortcut it and put the fire in before mapping, I lose a ton of texture and deffinition, i.e.

Looks good that way, how you have done it.

Possibly what you need to do is create the sphere in two different layers. Duplicate your layer before applying map-to-sphere, and make two complementary layers, one wit the two inner quarters and one with the outer quarters:



Then apply map to sphere to each with the very same parameters. You end up with a layer for the front hemisphere and one for the back hemisphere, and you just have to insert a layer with whatever should be in the sphere between the two:

Thanks a ton @ofnuts I'm gonna try that! Looks like exactly what I was trying to do, I just never considered breaking up the sphere before mapping.

Too lazy to build a background right now, but that was what I was trying to do...now I just have to monky with the technique to improve the results. Thanx again ofnuts!

runSPOTrun13, good idea yours. Ofnuts gave the right idea to compliment it. Seeing his result, I thought to do this result.

nice Issabella! I was making a flower one just now...funny effect, I like it.

definitely not quite there yet, but I'll keep playing with it!

Really good to learn this method, thank you runSPOTrun13 for asking and ofnuts for the answer. Great image Issabella, I'd love to know how you created the Solar effect, I really could do with using that in one of my projects.

RJKD, I used motion blur - zoom - length about 80 and angle 0. Anyway I post my .xcf and you can take a look at my tut "Light rays coming out from a sphere. I wish you a very nice job in you project.

Thank you Issabella, much appreciated

I'm loving the images! Looks like covers to sci-fi novels. Thanx for all the awesome replies!

Good images from RJKD and Issabella.

More thanks to both runSPOTrun13 and ofnuts for the prompts - just right for my Gouldian Finches -

decided to map a sphere, then map a text layer so I could make it float above...once again, needs some work, but has potential (says "dripdrop")

Not that hard using mathmap (distort>sphere).

Here are two tutorials that may help.

The Fun Sphere
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=429

Caged Dragon (Animated)
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=430

Hi ladies and gentlemen
Is it not a problem in the mrked areas?

you missed a step Rashid. You're missing the bottom row of "rear" left side of image, and "rear" top row right side. It helps me to think of the pre-mapped image divided vertically into quarters...left 1/4 is rear left, middle half is front, and right 1/4 is rear right. As you can see you didn't duplicate your stripes and shift them down a row on left and up a row on right, causing a gap to appear in the mapped ribbon.

This is what I am getting from different tutorials and your description. But the result is same...

The strip extremities should match, in other words, if you put two copies of your 'flat' image side by side, the strips should be continuous. You can generate the image by bucket-fillin with a pattern that looks like this:



Then everything matches:



By the way, nothing mandates that front and back should be the same color. The "back" hemisphere shows the color of the inside: