FOSSdome – Free and open source software for the planetarium dome and other immersive environments.

Subtitle Edit

At two recent conferences, I was able to demonstrate this workflow as it came up in conversation. It seemed worth covering in a short video.

I need to take more pictures of myself in the dome with lights on so I can add fun text to them.

Spiky Balls in Blender

Spiky balls are part of the decor in some scenes for the planetarium show we are making. Easy to make, plus it uses a couple small things that I rarely use in Blender, so I figured I’d share.

The blend files are on my Github: https://github.com/waystar/Featured-Blend-Files/blob/main/SpikyBalls.blend and https://github.com/waystar/Featured-Blend-Files/blob/main/SpikyBall_HowTo.blend

Or you can watch the video:

Happy Blending!

Blender Conference 2026

Blender Conference 2026 (YouTube Playlist)

I haven’t watched all of the videos from BCON26 yet, but I’ve been mightily impressed so far.

Two (2) excellent talks on fulldome planetarium productions, talks on using Blender for science applications, unusual spaces, real time assets, 2D/3D combinations and so much more. Coding and node-ing and guided tours under the hood.

Don’t be surprised to see me reference some of the talks individually in the weeks and months to come.

Blender Conference 2026 (YouTube Playlist)

Birthday Cake & Orbital Material | The Ron & Way Show

Your favorite Open Source Sorcerers are at it again!

We take a dive into the birthday cake model I worked on for use in the planetarium, and we get to explore Ron’s delightfully clever way of using shader nodes to display a fading orbital trail.

Be sure to hit the Like button, and please do subscribe to both of our channels while you’re there.

The birthday cake was shown in the previous post along with a link to the blend file.

Recent Birthday

The file Birthday_Cake.blend can be downloaded from

https://github.com/waystar/Featured-Blend-Files

I’ll post a followup linking to a peek at how I made parts of it in the current episode of The Ron and Way Show.

The Ron and Way Show

Part of my return to sharing FOSS-y goodness online is thanks to my good friend Ron Proctor.

Ron invited me to hang out and make some YouTube videos and I’ve been having a great time. Here is our latest:

The UV dome is in my previous post here on FOSSdome, and here is the cute little galaxy I just made with Ron’s script and node setup:

swirly blue dots

A Very Fishy UV Map

Generating a hemisphere model in Blender with properly spaced UVs for fisheye dome masters.

UVs are texture coordinates. An image plane 3D model would be measured in X and Y coordinates. The image texture applied to that model would be measures in U and V coordinates.

I frequently need to apply fisheye images to a virtual dome within Blender. Sometimes I’m prototyping, sometimes I’m building a scene with a dome in it, sometimes I’m splitting the dome into parts for special effects in the planetarium.

The quickest way has always been to create a UV Sphere and delete the bottom half.

Orange wireframe sphere wireframe sphere, bottom half orange

This results in a nice looking hemisphere, but we can’t apply a fisheye, since the UV map is half of what was created for the full sphere..

wireframe rectangle on left, wireframe hemisphere on right

Applying an image to the map yields a fun result, but not what we want..

Abstract image within a circle

Of course, a new UV map is required:

By unwrapping the hemisphere model, we can create a closer UV map..

But the rings toward the edges get closer together, and this causes distortion at the edges of the hemisphere..

After giving up on getting Gemini to help me extract a proper map from a UV hemisphere, I asked Gemini to write me a python script with 3 parts:

Create a flat circle with equally spaced rings
Unwrap the model to get a lovely UV map
Reposition the vertices of the circle to form the hemisphere.

It worked! And just look at the spacing on this lovely UV map…

And the same image texture applied.. just look at those edges, they are true!

The script can be downloaded here: UV_Dome_Generator_for_Good_UVmap.py

For the script, example blend file, an exported fbx model, and summaries of the method and the several wrong turns it took before I thought to make a circle first, go to https://github.com/waystar/Blender-UV-dome-generator.