Make a globe-like azimuthal orthographic projection

Sometimes, you want to provide a globe-like view on a static GIS map. Azimuthal orthographic projections can warp a layer containing countries to represent a round globe. In this recipe, we'll present data in one of these projections, named Sphere Azimuthal Equidistant.

Getting ready

You will need the Clip to Hemisphere plugin. Use the QGIS plugin manager to install it. The plugin will appear in the Processing Toolbox. You will also need to download the following zipped shapefile and extract it to your qgis_data directory:

https://github.com/GeospatialPython/Learn/raw/master/countries.zip

How to do it...

We are going to load the countries shapefile and clip it by centering the map on Africa and then removing the portions of the map that would be out of view on a globe. Then, we'll reproject the map to achieve the globe affect:

1. First, we import the Processing Toolbox:

           import processing 
   

2. Next, we'll establish the path to...