How to transform continents into projection???

[golem]

Hi! I want to create entire, naturalistic globe, with tectonic plates, climate, etc. I've already drawb a supercontinent, which will breake into several others. However, I have a problem with putting such a map on a planet (I'd like put my planet in Celestia, or some other rendering software). I don't know, how to do it to get naturalistic look, because flat image is difficult to be presented on a globe. Can you help me with that? Or better, could you give me some help with transforming flat pictures of continents into shapes, that would be well peresented on a sphere? I'm esppecially looking for a way for transforming single continent image into shape, that would lay well on a planet, depending on its possition, because during development of my continents, some of them will move from equator closer to one of poles.

And this is my first map, with future division of continents marked on the supercontinent:

[Ascension]

Are you talking about making it look distorted near the poles like on the pic below? Or are you talking about how to get it onto a globe in the first place?

[hubbardmapworks]

if you want a full globe, then try throwing it in gimp and warping it, or globing it. it will warp any image like way your talking about. gimp>filters>animation>spinning globe works for my big projection images. then adjust it.
adjusting the warp can be better answered by one of these other guys for now...i think you adjust the degree of warp with other tools.
i.e. make the whole map like you want (in 2D), then put in gimp as image, and globe it >>

[hubbardmapworks]

gimp globed this very easily, i would try it for your map when you get it fully labeled and ready to go. the animation part i am learning still.
this was a high-res image like acension posted
(with labels added in arcmap)

[Ascension]

I think it was either Redrobes or Ravells...maybe RobA who worked out an animation for globes like that. Whoever did it would be able to explain more and linky to their post on it.

[andre]

Very interesting, I hadn't realized gimp could do that. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.