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Making skybox texture question

by Wipeout · in Artist Corner · 07/01/2008 (6:50 pm) · 2 replies

Ok, so I have 360 degree skybox image I would like to use and I'm wondering how do I go about cutting up the image so that I can use it as a skybox texture?

Heres a small version of the texture im wanting to use
http://img66.imageshack.us/img66/8042/smallskyjy8.jpg

If I understand correctly the texture has to be cut into 7 images, one representing the top, bottom, left, right and so on. Is that correct? and how do you go about doing that?

Thanks
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Torque Owner Nmuta Jones
#1
07/01/2008 (7:16 pm)
That is an absolutely gorgeous texture.

Well, the "chorus" can correct me, but making skybox textures usually requires some special software. There are tools like Terragen that make skyboxes but from what I've heard you cannot use it for commercial stuff at all.

I used to make skybox textures with Bryce 5 "back in the day".
Essentially you set up a camera, a 3d immersive environment, and then render
front
right
back
left
up
down

and then of course save each render, etc.

In Bryce I also remember a weird thing where you had to set the FOV of the camera to 112.5

Good luck. I am sure that others will chime in, too. Skybox creation is fun and fulfilling. Plus I am sure that by now some better software to do it, even shareware or low cost tools, must exist to make it easier than it was six years ago.

Torque Owner Andy
#2
07/01/2008 (11:43 pm)
If you've got just about any version of Bryce (5 or 6), this method works great:
www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=2986

I've got a Bryce 5 and 6 rig that I made a couple of years ago using that tutorial.

I tried it with your sky map. I applied your map to a huge sphere (marking it for spherically mapped, no receive shadows, no cast shadows, no self shadows) on the ambient channel, and rendered out 7 preset images. It looks pretty good.