[ceenda]

He he, a websearch I did on this returned 100+ pages owned by Sky Box Office.

Basically, I know that you can do a scene in 3DSMAX, set up a camera with a viewing angle of 45 degrees and render the 6 frustums to get a skybox texture.

However, I want to 'paint' a skybox by hand, that is, I would like to be able to do some of my sci-fi landscape style pics as backdrops for a game. I think that the backdrops may have been painted in Half Life (Dhabih?) and the sky box in Outcast looks as though it was painted.

------------------
--
Nicholas Anderson
Department of Computing & Electrical Engineering
Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh
email: [email protected]
web: http://www.flyingislands.co.uk



[This message has been edited by ceenda (edited August 30, 2000).]

[ceenda]

I mean 90 degrees BTW...

[Nex]

got no idea what 6 frustums are (something like the 4 riders of the apocalypse?)

can someone help here?

- Up with you -

[Anthony]

Well of course it's possible! I suggest rendering out a skybox object in MAX and looking at the individual textures. Figure our the warp patterns, and apply those to your paintings. If you liked you could render out a skybox and paint over it.

------------------
-Anthony
Carpe Carpem

[Haarg2]

There is a rather neat-o program called Sky Paint which may be useful, and Gamasutra did an article about sky boxes a while back (which has the link to the Sky Paint homepage I think) the rellevant page being http://www.gamasutra.com/features/visual_arts/19981023/skybox_06.htm

--h2

[Muzman]

I tried sky paint for a bit; it just became more confusing. Most skies Ive seen done with it end up looking too "cylindrical" for want of a better word. They lose depth because you're too busy rotating between the angles with your funky program. Each frame is in very severe perspective at that 90 degree field of view (as you know); it's easy to forget that the renderer will be doing the interpolating if you can rotate between frames.
Rrendering basic primitives in some 3d prog at each angle and painting over it is better, to me anyway.


this city of mine was kinda done like that; most of those buildings are pretty basic Bryce4 stuff. Then I painted the lights some texture on after.
(I've since gone even more primitive and shunned texturing and lighting in the basic renders altogether)

[jason_watkins]

someone already mentioned skypaint.. it's a bit of a mind bender, but you can get ok results with it.

I've always wondered about loading a cube into something like 3DPaint, putting the view inside it at the center, and then doing your painting. You'll probibly want to start with a reference horizon so you don't get confused, but I think that approach may work a bit better than skypaint.

For what you're talking about, I'd probibly go with terragen, or one of the other commercial landscape proggies. Stay away from the typical "this is a Bryce image, sin't it k00l" look and you can get good stuff.

[LethargicBoy]

does anyone know about quicktime vr?
i know that the flat image that "wraps" around the camera has to be distorted to give the illusion of perspective, does this have any relevance to skyboxes!?