Skyboxes
Balmark
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 3476Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 3476Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
Just a quickie .. not sure if anyone care too much about this sorta stuff .. but I've been tinkering about with making skyboxes .. started with me messing about making a combat map and found unless I put a bit of effort into it, I'd have to rip off an existing skybox or just have no windows : P
My aim is to just keep adding to an 'mod' .. FFASkyboxes.. atm there's only 1 skybox there .. my first, but I plan to get better ; )
So if anyones making a map, load it up and take whatever skybox you want .. copy them to your map
I think they'll be 1024 res .. and they're gonna be simple starting off .. first is just purple sky, 3 suns (one big dim) .. bitta water and a bitta rock : P
Hoping to prompt more glass in maps .. I've been feeling a bit claustrophobic with maps that are basically big coffins
... stick a glass ceiling on half your map .. have glass tunnels, corridors, walls ; )
Don't be too harsh on the first skybox, as I said, its just my first
My aim is to just keep adding to an 'mod' .. FFASkyboxes.. atm there's only 1 skybox there .. my first, but I plan to get better ; )
So if anyones making a map, load it up and take whatever skybox you want .. copy them to your map
I think they'll be 1024 res .. and they're gonna be simple starting off .. first is just purple sky, 3 suns (one big dim) .. bitta water and a bitta rock : P
Hoping to prompt more glass in maps .. I've been feeling a bit claustrophobic with maps that are basically big coffins
... stick a glass ceiling on half your map .. have glass tunnels, corridors, walls ; )Don't be too harsh on the first skybox, as I said, its just my first
Comments
Dem smilies
Looks awesome though!
How do you create skyboxes?
Maybe you should add the link of the mod to your signature, that is a good advertisement and offers easy access, just an idea.
@F0rd This is quite helpful, I made one following the steps. Now I only have to get better with digital painting: forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/112417/creating-a-custom-skybox
The only thing I made different is that my material file looks like this:
shader = "shaders/SkyBox.surface_shader"
emissiveMap = "materials/skybox/sky_mapname_down.dds"
A question on that matter: Does a skybox texture has to be 1024x1024 or can you use higher resolutions? If I make a normal texture, they should have specific resolutions, but I found out that other resolutions are working as well. You might have problems if you want to use the standard editor scales for moving your texture, but the game ain't crashing. My skybox looks kinda 8bit
I hope ns2 will get a pool of custom textures, skyboxes, cinematics etc. That can be accessed. Something like, if you aggree that other members of the community use them, add them to this place kinda thing. Let's hope that mapping and modding will flourish once ns2 stops to get new builds and focus on the tools n stuff.
I'm not sure why 1024 .. really why I picked 1024 was just a tutorial from @Tig http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/112417/creating-a-custom-skybox .. but then after rendering a few .. my machine isn't great .. takes me about 2 hours to render 1 of the 6 sides of a skybox at 1024 .. wouldnt go higher unless it was an awesome scene and I didnt want to play NS2 for a week
F0rdPrefect, Terragen has a nice community skybox renderer tool and like 30 day evaluations and a free use with limitations
Just have to figure out how to use it, and how to not crash it within minutes
And btw, what is your approach to get a 360° render out of terragen?
Terragen's free version doesn't allow pictures broader than 900
https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/tools/files/DDS_Utilities_8.31.1127.1645.exe
I think has the nvdxt.exe that can convert most file formats to .dds
Can use something like
call %NVDXT% -file temp\%EXTENSION% -outdir %OUTPUT_FOLDER% -nomipmap -24 dxt5
I was using IrfanView to rotate images from the command prompt (the terragen skybox plugin doesnt get the rotations right for NS2)
and a simple echo command to create the material files
FOR %%f in (*.dds) do (
echo %%~nf
echo filename = %%~nf.material
echo shader = "shaders/SkyBox.surface_shader" > %%~nf.material
echo emissiveMap = "%LEADING%\%%~nf.dds" >> %%~nf.material
)
my problem is my pc is too slow .. current render is going for ~24hours and still about 30% left to go at a guess
trying to get something decent for loki .. although I think it's not dark enough and probably needs a stary night instead of what's there
@Balmark what are your system specs?
edit: Assigning "proper" material files (from biodome) didn't work, either, whereas when I load the existing skybox.cinematic from biodome the files are displayed correctly.
After assigning the materials, is there another step to do before saving?
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,14026.0.html is an .exe that creates 6 images based on your saved scene
I rendered 6 images manuall, with a FOV of 90 each, rotated by 90°...
Let's see how it works out.
What are your system specs? If your's are a lot worse than mine, maybe I can render it for you.
---
I still have the problem in the cinematic editor: Assigning the materials to the skybox and reopening the document gives me the broken default textures...
edit: Ok, seems to be a problem with the .dds files. Looks like I will have to get that photoshop plugin running, anyway -.-
edit2: Migrated CS2 to my primary drive. Still can't get the nvidia plugin running.
edit3: I got it working with paint.NET. Turns out it natively supports .dds! Who would've thought that?
There you go.