Skybox Tutorial by FragGnBraG
Take five minutes and do this little tutorial:
Let's say you have a skybox texture set 512x512 x 6 images
You can import them into MyLevel.
1. make a 512x512x512 subtracted cube for the skybox - build -
2. place the textures north south east west sides (the easy ones first)
3. place the top an bottom and rotate them until they match exactly the sides top and bottom edges
4. move your camera to the exact center of the box and look at the corners - you will likely see lines
5. using texture properties increase the texture size "Simple" of each surface to (example 1.02)
6. pan each surface until the "line" starts to disappear - you may have to repeat this small inrease a few
times to get it looking right (and it won't ever be perfect, but it can be close)
7. now set each surface to UNLIT.
8. place a skyzone actor EXACTLY in the center of the cube X,Y,Z. - build
9. make a room with fake backdrop unlit surfaces add a player start
10. open level properties, go to ZoneLight, expand - set Brightness to (start with 20)
11. next, study the skybox images (either with eyes or photoshop) and find the complimentary hue/sat value.
What I mean here, is there is a color that matches nicely with the colors in the pallette of the skybox "set"
For those winter mountains, or tyically dusk time of day, greyLight is the best place to start. That is 160hue 150sat.
Adjust the sat up or down to deepen or lighten the color. For example, when it gets dark outside (dusk) the ambient light
starts to look more "blue" so for evening, you would lower the saturation value (example maybe 120 is what you want - try it
If closer to brighter daylight, increase saturation to 160+ etc etc. Add a few regular lights into the map (color them if you like, but keep the radius small and put them nearer the ground - say 128 uu or so with a radius of 25. rebuild.
12. play the map
13. observe how the light casts in your map, or on other bsp objects, and how it matches the skybox..
14. play with the ambient settings as you add lights to your map and (usually) you adjust the brightness down to around 10 or so depending on how many lights and the radii etc as you build your level.
Thats basically it - you will still have the "edge of the map transition" to deal with, but there's lots of ways to create the illusion of a terrain with distance, and prevent the player from seeing the skybox from the edge of the map.
Let's say you have a skybox texture set 512x512 x 6 images
You can import them into MyLevel.
1. make a 512x512x512 subtracted cube for the skybox - build -
2. place the textures north south east west sides (the easy ones first)
3. place the top an bottom and rotate them until they match exactly the sides top and bottom edges
4. move your camera to the exact center of the box and look at the corners - you will likely see lines
5. using texture properties increase the texture size "Simple" of each surface to (example 1.02)
6. pan each surface until the "line" starts to disappear - you may have to repeat this small inrease a few
times to get it looking right (and it won't ever be perfect, but it can be close)
7. now set each surface to UNLIT.
8. place a skyzone actor EXACTLY in the center of the cube X,Y,Z. - build
9. make a room with fake backdrop unlit surfaces add a player start
10. open level properties, go to ZoneLight, expand - set Brightness to (start with 20)
11. next, study the skybox images (either with eyes or photoshop) and find the complimentary hue/sat value.
What I mean here, is there is a color that matches nicely with the colors in the pallette of the skybox "set"
For those winter mountains, or tyically dusk time of day, greyLight is the best place to start. That is 160hue 150sat.
Adjust the sat up or down to deepen or lighten the color. For example, when it gets dark outside (dusk) the ambient light
starts to look more "blue" so for evening, you would lower the saturation value (example maybe 120 is what you want - try it
If closer to brighter daylight, increase saturation to 160+ etc etc. Add a few regular lights into the map (color them if you like, but keep the radius small and put them nearer the ground - say 128 uu or so with a radius of 25. rebuild.
12. play the map
13. observe how the light casts in your map, or on other bsp objects, and how it matches the skybox..
14. play with the ambient settings as you add lights to your map and (usually) you adjust the brightness down to around 10 or so depending on how many lights and the radii etc as you build your level.
Thats basically it - you will still have the "edge of the map transition" to deal with, but there's lots of ways to create the illusion of a terrain with distance, and prevent the player from seeing the skybox from the edge of the map.