One day many years ago, I was playing around with a Richard Rosenman filter (3d Sphere Generator v1.5) and got an idea.

I made a 3D globe with Ulead GIF-X 2 plug-in, and did a lot of playing with the magic wand, selecting and making transparent, and applying the 3d sphere filter. I had to do it again with a reverse map to do the back side of the globe, which is a separate object.

The second globe has a shadow added to the "front" object.

This is a bit of a tweak on the globe I did for the PhotoImpact International animation, further down the list.