Best way to create a spherical environment to place an object on floor?

[stevesideas]

I'm trying to create an environment for a car using a sphere and a vray light material. I use a FFD 3x3x3 to flatten the lower portion of the sphere to act as the floor. The uvw mapping of the sphere is now over scaled. Any ideas on how to do this ?

[Morne]

Leave the original sphere as it was before you modified it and add a plane as a matte object?

[Dave_Wortley]

Add a UVWMap on top in Spherical mode.