making a good and detailed skybox

[Billo]

i often sit down and see other tf2/csgo etc maps and i notice that they have some relay good detailed skyboxes that look awesome. for example on tf2 there are some maps where you can see the water on the deathpit and if you look far away you dont see a line crossing the water vs the skybox water. how can i do something like this ? or in general being able to do something like this?

 

[Viemärirotta]

You can't really blend the borders of the skybox water, so usually the skybox starts further away for water.

 

[Billo]

no no i think i didnt explain well. i meant the skybox which you can make for example you can see from away trees or rocks and stuff so you are saving a lot of resurces.

 

[Lampenpam]

The water in the skybox is always cheap water. So you don't want your skybox transition to be too close to the playable area because the water close to the camera is expensive water and that makes the transition to the skybox obvious. So extend your map until expensive water distance doesn't reach to the skybox anymore.

Alternativly, you can change your water_lod setting to make the expensive water distance shorter, or even disable expensive water compleetly.

 

[Billo]

cool thanks. but i am using the well - water can i change the water from there too? and if i can what exactly do i do cause i dont see any settings and stuff.

 

[killohurtz]

Here's my favorite guide: https://tf2maps.net/threads/guide-seamless-3d-skyboxes.24667/
It explains how to hide the seam between main map and skybox water by forcing them to use the same cubemap. Is that what you were looking for?

 

[Lampenpam]

Create the water_lod_control entity. This alows you to change the transition values for expensive/cheap water. This setting will apply to all water surfaces in your map.

 

[Vel0city]

Assign the same cubemap to both bodies of water. That usually helps.