This is the most direct and precise way to get the Height/Normal data from a sphere - because we calculate the values directly. Obviously you could get these maps by just baking them from a highly detailed mesh but this would be an unnecessary detour. You could also just generate the normal map from the height map texture, but again, this would introduce all kinds of problems. You can also create all kinds of other shapes this way (Torus, Cone, etc...) and apply boolean operations on them to create more complex shapes. A great exercise for learning simple graphics programming. You can implement this anywhere you want - I just use Blender because you can easily change values on the fly - and it's node based. Download Blender for Free (v3.1): https://blender.org/download/
This is the most direct and precise way to get the Height/Normal data from a sphere - because we calculate the values directly. Obviously you could get these maps by just baking them from a highly detailed mesh but this would be an unnecessary detour. You could also just generate the normal map from the height map texture, but again, this would introduce all kinds of problems. You can also create all kinds of other shapes this way (Torus, Cone, etc...) and apply boolean operations on them to create more complex shapes. A great exercise for learning simple graphics programming. You can implement this anywhere you want - I just use Blender because you can easily change values on the fly - and it's node based. Download Blender for Free (v3.1): https://blender.org/download/