This was made as the grass texture using CS5. It was applied to a plane.
step 3 of 11
For the ball i started with a sphere, it has 32 segments.
step 4 of 11
Using soft selection on the vertices.
step 5 of 11
transforming those selected vertices
step 6 of 11
adjusting some edges for shape
step 7 of 11
chamfering edges to create the seams
step 8 of 11
After chamfer operation I selected the new polygons and applied a negative amount of extrusion, this is for the balls seams
step 9 of 11
step 10 of 11
this was made in Photoshop and used as a displacement map on the ball along with the above mentioned texture/bump maps. This is a layer of white with a "stained glass" texture filter applied. (Photoshop)
step 11 of 11
using the UVW Map Gizmo to apply the texture map on the football. Scene was lit with a Mental Ray sun.