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Welcome at SDU - 11:56:08
Interview: Avoc about his modification HQ Skyboxes
How did you came up with the idea to create more detailed skyboxes for the game?
Well, it started off as a favor for a friend who made his first map, Rushers11. He was using the original Gold Rush sky (a sky that most nighttime ET maps are using). I wanted to reward his patience in mapmaking (he restarted the map 11 times, that is why its called rushers11!) by making a custom sky for him. The usual step mapmakers take when making a custom sky is to use terragen and use the skybox script that is available for the program. Most often it creates a good result, I've used it myself for Breakout 2. But still, the quality of those skyboxes are not THAT good. The clouds are very soft and blurry, with no real profile.
So, I used a different program all together. I've known about Vue (www.e-onsoftware.com) since it was in version 3 and it has evolved into a very powerful tool for 3D rendering and creation of natural environments. Pirates of the Caribbean 3 used the program to create most of the lush islands in the movie for instance. In Vue you have complete control over the clouds. You can control the thickness, sharpness, fluffiness, depth etc. However, it did not have that fancy terragen skybox script, so I had to manually adjust the cameras. But when I got the hang of it, it really wasn't that hard.
After playing around a bit, and making the skybox for him, I noticed that it not only looked good, but seemed to raise the overall aesthetic quality of the entire map.
This was when I figured that ET could use more high quality skyboxes. ET is still a beautiful game, and depending on the patience and skill of the mapmaker, the quality of the maps themselves demand a good looking sky. In the end, I am just a guy who likes to look at the sky; and I wish to try and bring some good looking ones into games.
How detailed are the skyboxes you make and how did you come by that size? Is the size of the texture limited by your cpu?
The detail of the skyboxes are mostly the same. They all have heavily utilized spectral clouds (real 3D clouds) that are streatched out into the horizon. The larger the resolution of the skyboxes, the more detailed they are. As an example, if you take a look at some of the skyboxes Amethyst made, they have very blurred edges and should you take the binoculars and zoom all the way into the sky, it would most likely have lots of weird splotches.
When I made my first skybox in terragen, I used the 512 x 512 resolution. Then I tried playing Diego's Praetoria I noticed that his skybox used 1024 x 1024 pictures - and the quality was much higher. I kept this in mind when I started to play around in Vue, and the first test skyboxes I made were quite nice, but still, when I zoomed in they looked weird. I decided to try the next step, 2048x2048 and even though the render time was massivly increased, the skybox looked much better than I thought it would. I decided to stick with this size; Yes the skybox would add a couple of mb extra to the .pk3 and yes, the render time is pretty annoying, but I think it's worth it. It's furthermore better to give the mapper the option to scale down the images of the skybox if they want to, and still retain the quality. They can't scale the images up. I would probably render the skies in a 4096 x 4096 resolution if my computer had been better. I use my laptop to render, and it has a weak dualcore and not enough ram. I think that anything above 4096 x 4096 is unnecessary though.
Is it hard to do create or could everyone make a detailed skybox like those?
Anyone can create good looking skyboxes, the only thing that is necessary is the patience and will to do so. I can recommend Vue 7 as it is quite easy when you become acquainted with it. The only hard part is to actually wait until the rendering is completed. Each side of the skybox (not counting the bottom part) takes about 6 hours to render (+/- 2 hours depending on the complexity).
Well, it started off as a favor for a friend who made his first map, Rushers11. He was using the original Gold Rush sky (a sky that most nighttime ET maps are using). I wanted to reward his patience in mapmaking (he restarted the map 11 times, that is why its called rushers11!) by making a custom sky for him. The usual step mapmakers take when making a custom sky is to use terragen and use the skybox script that is available for the program. Most often it creates a good result, I've used it myself for Breakout 2. But still, the quality of those skyboxes are not THAT good. The clouds are very soft and blurry, with no real profile.
So, I used a different program all together. I've known about Vue (www.e-onsoftware.com) since it was in version 3 and it has evolved into a very powerful tool for 3D rendering and creation of natural environments. Pirates of the Caribbean 3 used the program to create most of the lush islands in the movie for instance. In Vue you have complete control over the clouds. You can control the thickness, sharpness, fluffiness, depth etc. However, it did not have that fancy terragen skybox script, so I had to manually adjust the cameras. But when I got the hang of it, it really wasn't that hard.
After playing around a bit, and making the skybox for him, I noticed that it not only looked good, but seemed to raise the overall aesthetic quality of the entire map.
This was when I figured that ET could use more high quality skyboxes. ET is still a beautiful game, and depending on the patience and skill of the mapmaker, the quality of the maps themselves demand a good looking sky. In the end, I am just a guy who likes to look at the sky; and I wish to try and bring some good looking ones into games.
How detailed are the skyboxes you make and how did you come by that size? Is the size of the texture limited by your cpu?
The detail of the skyboxes are mostly the same. They all have heavily utilized spectral clouds (real 3D clouds) that are streatched out into the horizon. The larger the resolution of the skyboxes, the more detailed they are. As an example, if you take a look at some of the skyboxes Amethyst made, they have very blurred edges and should you take the binoculars and zoom all the way into the sky, it would most likely have lots of weird splotches.
When I made my first skybox in terragen, I used the 512 x 512 resolution. Then I tried playing Diego's Praetoria I noticed that his skybox used 1024 x 1024 pictures - and the quality was much higher. I kept this in mind when I started to play around in Vue, and the first test skyboxes I made were quite nice, but still, when I zoomed in they looked weird. I decided to try the next step, 2048x2048 and even though the render time was massivly increased, the skybox looked much better than I thought it would. I decided to stick with this size; Yes the skybox would add a couple of mb extra to the .pk3 and yes, the render time is pretty annoying, but I think it's worth it. It's furthermore better to give the mapper the option to scale down the images of the skybox if they want to, and still retain the quality. They can't scale the images up. I would probably render the skies in a 4096 x 4096 resolution if my computer had been better. I use my laptop to render, and it has a weak dualcore and not enough ram. I think that anything above 4096 x 4096 is unnecessary though.
Is it hard to do create or could everyone make a detailed skybox like those?
Anyone can create good looking skyboxes, the only thing that is necessary is the patience and will to do so. I can recommend Vue 7 as it is quite easy when you become acquainted with it. The only hard part is to actually wait until the rendering is completed. Each side of the skybox (not counting the bottom part) takes about 6 hours to render (+/- 2 hours depending on the complexity).
Posted on 2009-08-13 by Scary
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