title: Evenly distributing n points on a sphere
body: <p>I need an algorithm that can give me positions around a sphere for N points (less than 20, probably) that vaguely spreads them out. There's no need for "perfection", but I just need it so none of them are bunched together.</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5408276/python-uniform-spherical-distribution">This question</a> provided good code, but I couldn't find a way to make this uniform, as this seemed 100% randomized.</li>
  <li><a href="http://www.xsi-blog.com/archives/115" rel="noreferrer">This blog post</a> recommended had two ways allowing input of number of points on the sphere, but the <a href="http://sitemason.vanderbilt.edu/page/hmbADS" rel="noreferrer">Saff and Kuijlaars</a> algorithm is exactly in psuedocode I could transcribe, and the <a href="http://cgafaq.info/wiki/Evenly_distributed_points_on_sphere#Spirals" rel="noreferrer">code example</a> I found contained "node[k]", which I couldn't see explained and ruined that possibility. The second blog example was the Golden Section Spiral, which gave me strange, bunched up results, with no clear way to define a constant radius.</li>
  <li><a href="http://mathworld.wolfram.com/SpherePointPicking.html" rel="noreferrer">This algorithm</a> from <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1841014/uniform-random-monte-carlo-distribution-on-unit-sphere">this question</a> seems like it could possibly work, but I can't piece together what's on that page into psuedocode or anything.</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>A few other question threads I came across spoke of randomized uniform distribution, which adds a level of complexity I'm not concerned about. I apologize that this is such a silly question, but I wanted to show that I've truly looked hard and still come up short.</p>
  
  <p>So, what I'm looking for is simple pseudocode to evenly distribute N points around a unit sphere, that either returns in spherical or Cartesian coordinates. Even better if it can even distribute with a bit of randomization (think planets around a star, decently spread out, but with room for leeway).</p>