[TUTORIAL] Making a cool 3d skybox.

[peclarkjr]

3D skybox for outside viewing area

Nice tutorial. I really appreciate it. I made a CTF castle type map with button controlled doors and draw bridges. There's water, tunnels, etc. the map works great. I want to add a 3d skybox and surround the map with grass and mountains in the distance.

So with the map I placed the sky_camera at 000.000 coordinates. I selected and copied my entire map.....pasted just to the left of my map and lined it up. Then I shrank the entire copied map to scale .0625. The Sky_camera is in my small map and I went back deleted the sky_camera from my playable map....Correct? So now its ONLY in my small map.

Then I surrounded the small map with a brush and textured it with grass so far.

Ok so I complied just to see if the grass area would show up outside my map. What I get is to one side of the playable area in game is MY MAP....no grass. I see the two castles there....


I only have one sky camera and its in the small map.

Any ideas on what I did wrong?

Should I move my big playable map over and put the small map at coordinates 000.000?

Here is a screenshot:
http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/ff215/inextirpable/kingscastlefight0001.jpg



Thanks so much!

 

[Baraleth]

Thanks. It really helped out with my map making

 

[elfworks]

Very helpful tutorial, thanks!

The only time I stumbled was creating the skybox for the reduced world - I made it too small at first.

Now create a new skybox for you model, in the same way before. Draw a box that covers the ground texture and is high enough. Right mouse click and select Make Hollow with the thickness of 64.

I was able to solve my problem by looking at your sample scene, but a screenshot after this step would have cleared things up.

Otherwise, it was a clear and easy to follow tutorial.

Thanks again!

 

[[FT] Andy]

hi, im new to the mapping scene and im a bit stuck with the 3d skybox. Below is a sky view of my map:
http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb134/Lanfear_17/map_skyview.jpg
the 4 outdoor areas ideally need a 3d skybox but im not too sure how to go about it.

 

[Sgt Frag]

peclarkjr, not sure what you did wrong but try a few things.

[FT] Andy, you probably want to read this too.

First peclarkjr, delete the copy you made and the camera and start over.

1st, create a sky camera at 0,0,0 (that makes sure everything in world and skybox line up.)

2nd, create some basic brushes around your map. ground is fine, maybe a few boxes to represent buildings/mountain if you will want them. This helps to keep scale correct when you finish skybox.

3rd, select ONLY the camera and the brushes you created around your map that you want in skybox. No need to copy your map.

4th, move those to the side, scale to 0.0625 (make sure you check tex lock buttons so textures scale properly).

5th, surround your skybox brushes with a cube and texture with sky (can be a cube hollowed or can be 6 brushes, just make sure it is sealed too).

Should work now. Good luck.

 

[[FT] Andy]

oh i see, i'll give it a shot, thanks

 

[tortilaman]

I've been using your tutorial and others to aid me in the creation of my skybox (I've been using simple 2d, and wanted to step it up) and came across a problem: I see a copy of the level in the skybox. I've checked for leaks in the regular level, and the 3d skybox (it's just a hollowed out brush) and haven't found any. I'm wondering what else could be the problem, because to my knowledge, there's only one sky camera entity.
screenshots:
The Level

The skybox reproducing it if you get high enough.

 

[Cr4ig0]

i tried this and the outcome was pretty horrible :/ i had half of the map with a sky and the other half with that flickery stamp thing going on... what did i do wrong?

 

[phantombadger]

Good tutorial. its good to see an in progress explanation of the dev wiki. everything in this tut is in the wiki but the pics and a someones take on it helps. thanx

 

[Baraleth]

hey do you guys know how to make it so your main part of the map doesn't appear in the sky?

 

[Woo-Zee-Moo]

Delete it from the 3d skybox.

 

[Tony Shwiztana]

Question,

Could you just build you whole map normal sized, copy all the brushes that you want in your skybox (my concern being mostly on displacments) use that there shrink ray method of yours then delete the originals and have everything work out?


I tried displacing a small part of my map which i haven't done so to yet, all my brushes displaced and not copied, transformed and changed texture scale and it look as though it would work, I didn't compile because Im doing all my brush work before anything else, a for sure yes would defenetly be nice to hear though, thanks

 

[Ninjilla]

I have the oddest problem...

When I play my map, only some of the 1/16th props show up. These ones are also props sticking out slightly from the skybox, which I fixed, but havent tested it out to see if those worked. Anywho, I was playing my map, and I noticed that I could see the smaller, 1/16 skybox props (coincidentally only the ones that appeared in my main level appeared there until I got very close.), and on the other side, a copy of my level that I assume was 16 times bigger! I noclipped there, and it seemed to be going slow, but I think its just because everything else was huge. Anyone know why this happened and a fix for it?

 

[eerieone]

when you dont do vrad and vvis render, you will see your level projected throught the skybox. rendering with vvis & vrad on at least fast in expert mode should solve that issue.

 

[Ninjilla]

Same problem, and when I expanded the skybox for my 3D so the props didnt stick out, even less showed up. I dont know why its making this way bigger version in the first place >_<

 

[Tetra]

Great tutorial, spaceweasels. Been looking for a decent 3dskybox tut, not sure why I didn't look here first Next time I'll be sure to though!


+Thanks to you, sir.

 

[Mr.Eagle]

Hi, everybody - first time at this forum.

Quick question, I've looked at some valve maps (lumberyad and goldrush) and noticed that their skycameras are not at 0,0 and I can't seem to find how they managed to change the orientation in its settings.

 

[YM]

Hi, everybody - first time at this forum.

Quick question, I've looked at some valve maps (lumberyad and goldrush) and noticed that their skycameras are not at 0,0 and I can't seem to find how they managed to change the orientation in its settings.

The camera doesn't have to be at 0,0,0 the camera represents 0,0,0 for the 1/16 scale stuff.

so say you put a prop at 32 units above the sky camera entity, that will then appear ingame to be 16 times bigger and it will be projected at 0,0,512.

 

[Mr.Eagle]

Oh, ok thanks!

The other thing I'm curious about - were the walls in the skybox put around the transformed floor brush? Which is why they line up to the corner pieces in the rendered map?

 

[HellJumper]

I need help with something. Whenever I try to use any other skybox texture other than the default, it does not work. I am getting everything to work right, including the 3D part, but I just cant make sky_alpinestorm_01 to work the right way.

EDIT: Yeah... I forgot to build cubemaps (DUH!) I fixed it!