# How do you turn a cube into a sphere?

I'm trying to make a quad sphere based on an article, which shows results like this:

I can generate a cube correctly:

But when I convert all the points according to this formula (from the page linked above):

    x = x * sqrtf(1.0 - (y*y/2.0) - (z*z/2.0) + (y*y*z*z/3.0));
y = y * sqrtf(1.0 - (z*z/2.0) - (x*x/2.0) + (z*z*x*x/3.0));
z = z * sqrtf(1.0 - (x*x/2.0) - (y*y/2.0) + (x*x*y*y/3.0));


My sphere looks like this:

As you can see, the edges of the cube still poke out too far. The cube ranges from -1 to +1 on all axes, like the article says.

Any ideas what is wrong?

• Does your implementation contain "x = x ..." problem too or is it just here? – snake5 Nov 14 '12 at 9:55
• Fantastic visual aids. Thankyou for including those. – doppelgreener Nov 14 '12 at 10:04
• To answer the question in the title, you can just normalize the vertices of the cube to make it a sphere. The distribution of the vertices will probably be different from the linked method though. – msell Nov 14 '12 at 10:09
• – MichaelHouse Nov 14 '12 at 16:16

You've miswritten the formula.

x = x * sqrtf(1.0 - (y*y/2.0) - (z*z/2.0) + (y*y*z*z/3.0));
y = y * sqrtf(1.0 - (z*z/2.0) - (x*x/2.0) + (z*z*x*x/3.0));
z = z * sqrtf(1.0 - (x*x/2.0) - (y*y/2.0) + (x*x*y*y/3.0));


You modify the original x and overwrite it. Then you modify y based not on the original x but the modified x. Then you modify z based on the modified version of both of those.

Preserve the originals, and calculate this:

float dx = x * sqrtf(1.0 - (y*y/2.0) - (z*z/2.0) + (y*y*z*z/3.0));
float dy = y * sqrtf(1.0 - (z*z/2.0) - (x*x/2.0) + (z*z*x*x/3.0));
float dz = z * sqrtf(1.0 - (x*x/2.0) - (y*y/2.0) + (x*x*y*y/3.0));


Use dx, dy and dz from then on.

• Whoops. Wasn't thinking. – Tom Dalling Nov 14 '12 at 10:15
• do u have any sample source for the above program? – Vamsi Dec 8 '15 at 6:43