UV first then I would model most of the relief (except text) use make live and draw curve on the sphere then extrude along these, you could then bake out a occlusion map to help texture in photoshop or use the mesh as is............not easy texturing spheres...........dave Any tutorials that might help point me in the right direction? As I said, it's been a while since I've used maya. What benefit would an occlusion map have over a normal or bump map?