Create your own Spinning Globe in minutes

Create this Spinning Globe with Quartz Composer in minutes.
All you need to do is follow this quick tutorial.



Once you have installed the XCode Developer tools that ship with your mac discs, you
should be able to use the Graphic tool called Quartz Composer.
It is located under the folders Developer->Applications->Graphics Tools->Quartz Composer
Next start up Composer.


Select Basic Composition then click Next.



Enter a Composition name which you will be able to remember like globe for example,
then select finish. A default quartz composer project template will be displayed as follows.



As this is not what we are looking for you can select the bottom three boxes by
clicking and dragging your mouse over them. They should be highlighted in blue.
Then press backspace to delete them.



You can change the gradient background by clicking on the gradient box and then selecting
the i inspector (top right). Then click on the arrow icon to get the next set of options.
This should show you three colours used to make the gradient.


Once you have clicked on the colours, you can select a new one. (optional)
Next we add 2 new patch items the Sphere Renderer and then the image downloader generator followed by the part that makes it spin.



Select the Renderer Sphere patch from the patch library by double clicking on it.


It should appear as per the above image. Next we select Sphere by clicking on it and then clicking on Inspector. This should display the patch attributes as per below:


You can reduce the sphere size by typing in a new value or spinning the dial located next to Scale; 0.85 seems like a good size on my screen.
Next we add the Image to map onto the Sphere.
Finding a image map on the web could take a while. I found one on this link. Choose a small file size for a URL download it makes the download time shorter.
Next we add the image generator patch by selecting image Downloader (this requires a URL link like "http://veimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/1438/earth_lights_lrg.jpg" as URL source.



So click on it twice and the Image Downloader Generator patch should appear.
Then click on the circle next to image URL enter the image URL and then press enter.


Next Add the Interpolation patch to planet earth spinning.
Click on the Interpolation box and select inspector to set the rotation
value and speed (Duration).

Then select the Interpolation Result output by clicking on the result circle and dragging it to the Y-Rotation input on the Sphere connecting the two.
Do the same for the Image Downloader and connect the image output to the Sphere image input.

And your done see nice an easy.
This quartz .qtz file can now be used as a screen saver by copying it to the ~/Library/Screen Savers/ Folder.

For an RSS tutorial that will update you on the latest highway traffic jams click here.

The Quartz Composition Source file can be downloaded here.

All for now...