Terragen sky

#1 Yeah, I went ahead and kicked down for it a while back, though. I have Bryce 5.5, 6.0 & 6.1, but they don't hold a candle to Terragen for producing photorealistic skyboxes.

BTW, in your scene above, go in and change your ambient sun settings to a color closer to your sky color and do the same with the sunlight along with messing with your fog distances and it's primary color also. You'd be amazed at the way you're levels seem to all "mesh" together.



- Alan

Edit wrong image.

#2 I was thinking of doing that, but it looks kinda cool with the huge contrast between the ground and the sky.

#3 How can I import my Terragen stuff to TGE? Like you did, thats pretty cool

#4 @Elise

Here is a script that will produce the six directional images that produce a Torque skybox:

www.reallyreallygoodthings.com/resources/MAKESKY.TGS

Just drop it somewhere you can find it and run it after you have your scene set up in Terragen. make sure in the center of the scene that the terrain is very low or water - if you don't, one or more of your renders will end up under the terrain.

Once you have the image files, convert them from .BMP to .JPG (you can use .PNGs, but the files are big and the image quality I really don't think is crazy different). Next create a text file with the images listed like:

image1.jpg
image2.jpg
image3.jpg
image4.jpg
image5.jpg
image6.jpg
image7.jpg

I believe image6 would be looking "down" and image7 would be the image used for environmental mapping so you can probably choose image5 (the one pointing up) for that. Now on image 6 & 7 I sometimes get them mixed up so you can try it and see if it works, you might have to reverse them.

For moving clouds you'll need a transparent/semi-tranparent .PNG they will be listed as:

cloud1.png
cloud2.png
cloud3.png

right behind the images listed above. The clouds are not necessary, but they look pretty cool once you get them right. The naming structure is not important, what is important is that the image files match the names listed in your text file. Finally rename the .TXT file to .DML put all of the images and the .DML file in a directory together in your game directory, for example starter.fps/data/myskies/. And your sky should be available next time you run your game.

- Alan

#5 Thanks, this will help a lot =D

#6 Very nice sky :). I agree with Alan, though, it looks a bit unreal if you just leave the level's sun colour white while your sky colour is yellow.

#7 What's Terragen? If both those pics were made with it, I'm definitly interested!

#8 Here's the answer.

#9 @Nathan,

Terragen is a

Quote:scenery generator for Windows and the Mac OS

(from their website)
www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/

I use it specifically for skyboxes, as noted in the instructions above. The rest of the scene pictured in the screenshot I posted is TGE 1.4 with the Modernization Kit Resouce integrated(not for the faint of heart). It requires extensive source code changes. Along with DEM (Digital Elevation Map) based terrain.