texturing a sphere

Well I know what I gotta do but I can't get my texture of a soccerball to appear right on a sphere in 3d max, I'm animating it so it needs to look right all around, haven't been able to do that yet. Anyone know of any tutorials for texturing spheres? I tried to make it seamless in PS, but I did a quick crappy job, can't get it to look right at all, still it doesn't look right.

here is the soccer ball pic i'm tryin to work with (its been cleaned up already in PS, got rid of text all over it and touched up a bit), can anyone help me make this pic into something I can use in 3ds max? http://www.liquid2k.com/knight/ballcleaned.bmp

I figure since thats the front of the ball, somehow I gotta get it to represent the back too and not show seams around the edges...

Hmm, this posed actaully to be hard to do, but i did it anyway!

http://www.boomspeed.com/cybling/soccertex.jpg

Apply this to the sphere and also use this to bump it.

hope it helps...

cybling i did read ur responce like 2 days ago and still haven't found the time to try it, i'll probably check it out tomarrow, thanx a lot for going through the time with that image I really appreciate it, thanx.

I'll get back to ya.

cybling got around to tryin it out today, your the man :D worked perfectly, I was wondering if you would know of any tutorials for creating textures for unusual shapes, I mean not everything will be a square or sphere all the time, are there certain technigues to use so you can figure out how you'll have to map out an object?

Thanks for the help.

No not really, it all depends on your shape and how you apply the texture;UV mapping, Frontal etc. Best thing to do is probably just figure out in your head what you want the shape to look like in the end, and then unfold that image in your mind or on paper so you can draw it inn 2d. I'm not certain, but i don't think there's a knack, just trial and error!

Glad it worked.