Heightmapping spheres?

I haven't myself, but I'm sure it would work exactly the same as a height mapped plane (assuming you've done that before). If you haven't done that before, maybe try that first and see how it would apply to a sphere. The main problem I see is in making the map line up nicely with a sphere, but that's not too big of a deal for an artist.

Matt Hughson

I've tried it...
It looks very cool and it isnt hard to do. I've even created a morphing system so that on a "normal", flat sphere hills are being rised....

Steps to do this effect:
- you should have a flat plane ( square will be good, N x N grids)
- than use some math and create a sphere from that plane
- add height from the heightmap to the radius when calcing position of the point on a grid
- thats all... :)

It was some time ago. I used the Allegro library.

Have a nice fun with that effect :)

Could you not just move out the vertices of the sphere in the direction of the normal?