How to map it onto a sphere?

Great follow-up question @bobotheimp  !

On the screenshot below you can see how to do it. First you have to UV-unwrap the sphere, that way all the faces will be “laid down” on a 2d plane, and the maths nodes will then apply the same way.

The second thing to do is to change the Texture Coordinate from “Object” to “UV”, so Blender understands what to use. You’ll probably have to crank up the X,Y and Z scale of the mapping node, depending on the size of the sphere.

Note that UV-unwrapping a sphere can be sometime challenging, and it’s normal (and unavoidable) to have the tiles twisted on some areas (like the poles of the sphere).

Hope this helps, let me know if it worked!

/Thibaut

Indeed,  and then in Edit mode selet all and hit Shift+S ”to sphere” with maximum value (1). The unwrapping can still be fonky and the texture warped but I Find it easier to control, good call!