The tiger stripes are tiled four times and mapped to the sphere in a logical way in the preview. In-game they’re only tiled twice, and suffer from distortion, especially where the stripes meet. I see similar behavior when mapping the texture to other built-in shapes. I tried isotropic and perspective views.
I know I could create a UV map in a 3D modeling tool to get a better mapping. I’m just curious if I were missing any Unity settings that would make the in-game material look similar to the in-preview material without spending time in a 3D modeling tool.
PS - I wasn’t sure of the ideal forum for this question.
It’s probably just how these built-in primitives are uv mapped, and I doubt there’s anything you can do about it. Doesn’t look like the shape it’s using to preview materials is the same one that you can drop into the scene from the menu.
If you just want to work with primitives here, then it should only take you a second to create a sphere or cube in a modeler. Most will have an automatic UV map applied upon creation, so you could just create a few in a modeler and use them instead of the Unity default ones.
Apologies if I’ve misunderstood your question here, but I don’t think there’s anything you’ll be able to do except change the tiling amount on those shapes.
Thanks, you’ve totally answered my question. 
