[TUTORIAL] Painting a Skybox

Ritz

Ritz

L2: Junior Member
Aug 24, 2009
55
176
So, people seemed to like the skybox I started on for my contest map. Since it really wasn't that hard to do, here's a little tutorial.

This is just getting the image made, once I've figured out how to turn it into a working skybox I'll add it to this post.

Results:
Skybox_Artpass_Small.png


One thing I forgot to add: If you're aiming to make a skybox out of this you want the image to be huuuuuge, like 4096x2048.

Tutorial.jpg

So there you have it. I made the tutorial image really quickly so it's pretty rough, but if you spend some time on it you can get a pretty nice image out of it.

Edit: Since apparently I didn't make it clear in my original post, you're still going to have to paint over the end result to get a valve-quality texture. Photoshop tricks can only get you so far, eventually you're going to have to do ART.
 
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Jimmy

Jimmy

L420: High Member
Jul 6, 2009
421
228
Looks sexy. I love you. I want to have your babies. Now to go reinstall photoshop...
 
A

ANova

L7: Fancy Member
Jul 16, 2009
415
132
Is it okay if i use that mountain picture for a background? lol
 
Dr. ROCKZO

Dr. ROCKZO

L8: Fancy Shmancy Member
Jul 25, 2009
580
159
/me Braces for influx of Alpine Maps with Skyboxes consisting of 3 rows of mountains. But good job, easy to follow with great results.
 
ricardojvc6

ricardojvc6

L6: Sharp Member
Jun 8, 2009
268
66
I... I... can't believe... This is my dream. This is the best tutorial i ever seen to make skyboxes :D I <3 you RITZ xD
 
C

ColonelBD

L1: Registered
Jan 9, 2010
18
21
Ive been meaning to try and have a go at making a skybox, but I have trouble getting the style right. So this is GOLDEN! And with artpass going on this couldn't have come at a more better time!
 
Terr

Terr

Cranky Coder
aa
Jul 31, 2009
1,590
410
Had a nutty idea. Might not be do-able.

Construct a UV sphere in Blender, using the inside faces. Then use the texture painting tool to paint (from the perspective of being in the center of the sphere) a scene. In a sense, it's "undistorted" because you're doing first-person painting of the sky.

Then if there was some way to transfer/bake/transform it to an unwrapped cube instead... do final touchups in a real graphics program.
 
Ravidge

Ravidge

Grand Vizier
aa
May 14, 2008
1,544
2,818
Terr said:
Had a nutty idea. Might not be do-able.

Construct a UV sphere in Blender, using the inside faces. Then use the texture painting tool to paint (from the perspective of being in the center of the sphere) a scene. In a sense, it's "undistorted" because you're doing first-person painting of the sky.

Then if there was some way to transfer/bake/transform it to an unwrapped cube instead... do final touchups in a real graphics program.
Click to expand...

I think newer photoshop versions have a tool for painting on 3d models? I'm not sure since I still use the good old CS2 :)

However, I did something like this and it's very easy to spherify a cube and project the 6 textures inside. (3ds max though)
SS-2009.07.12-02.19.01.png

(hmm.. from july 2009)
 
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Leminnes

Leminnes

aa
Jan 20, 2010
1,317
902
:O That's very cool, Rav. Also, PS CS4 does have such a thing, but I have no idea how to use it.
 
Grim Tuesday

Grim Tuesday

aa
Nov 14, 2009
1,257
378
Alright, this is getting stupid. I guess its time for me to make the long due space skybox hdrshop method tutorial!
 
ricardojvc6

ricardojvc6

L6: Sharp Member
Jun 8, 2009
268
66
Actually as i far know... i noticed some errors. Never use guassian blur on skyboxes. It makes them worse. Use gradient or just paint it by yourself. Never use Filters.
 
C

ColonelBD

L1: Registered
Jan 9, 2010
18
21
Because it can leave artifacts and other messed up effects.

As for the sphere in blender, to do that you want a normal cube, subdivide (Not subsurf) about 3 or 4 times, before hitting "to sphere" on editing, mesh tools whilst in edit mode. Im using 2.49 so I don't know if they changed the layout for 2.5.

Your gonna want too uv map the cube before rounding it out, don't lay any seams, then set the dimesions for each face, then reticulate your nomals inwards.

Also give each face its own material (up down right ect). That way when you subdivide you can easily select all the faces for each side. When you done painting, render bake from textures only.

I don't know if you're supposed to scale the ball by 0.5 if your dimensions are like 1024x512, so if your baked image is stretched, you might want to try that, im not 100% about that though.

Just my two cents ;)
 
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