The bz2 sky

[MrTwosheds]

Finally I got a more complex sky dome to work. This one has a planetary orbital ring and a cloud layer underneath it, both move slowly, there is also the flat cloud plane, so there are 2 layers of clouds.


Tip, bz2 does not seem to like objects with more than one texture in its sky, ugly things happen every time I tried this. So the dome texture here has clouds on the bottom 3/4 of the texture and an orbital stripe at the top. Only scroll in one direction.

Still don't seem to be able to get any dome.light to work, can change the colour of dome.ambient, but its very ineffective.

[Red Devil]

looks like you got it upside down or something; there's bricks up in the sky

looks nice

[TheJamsh]

Nice work sheds Always wanted to create a Halo style skydome, i.e. having the halo go off into the distance.

Anybody tried experimenting with different shapes in skydomes? I would do it myself, But i've got no idea how big im supposed to make them in 3DS...

[bigbadbogie]

The big problem I have found is that skydomes seem to be squashed flat into a dome shape by the engine regardless of the shape of the model chosen.
This may be wrong but is the way I interpreted it when I was testing skydome techniques earlier this year.

[TheJamsh]

The stock ones are fairly flat already, probably only about an 8th of a full sphere.

EDIT: Just imported a stock one into MAX, wow they are TINY...

[Nielk1]

The size can varry a lot as in game can change radius (less so than the past, hence why the sky isn't quite right in TV's Tron maps in 1.3pb6.2. I have tested some unusual shapes. 2Sheds is correct, though understating a tad, that "ugly" things happen. It is more of a "my god what have I done!" situation.

I think the issue BBB has is more with the projected effect rather than the literal shape. Rending an object around the player like that has to get a bit wierd geometry wise.

[MrTwosheds]

Dome models need to be small, no more than 1-2 units wide in max, they can be tweaked with radius in bz2, but if they are too big to start with you get problems with not being able to scale them very well, you would also get problems lighting them if dome lights worked as they used to.
A sky dome is always viewed from its pivot point, nothing below the pivot point (0,0,0) will be drawn at all.
Flatter domes are easier to texture and look better.

[General BlackDragon]

I have an upside down dome(sliced sphere viewed from the outside), but the middle of it is very dark, only the edges are light.

Any suggestions?

[MrTwosheds]

For now make it smaller. I am hoping that at some point GSH will brave the dark dingy depths of bz2 lighting again and fix up the dome lights. They always were quite difficult to set up before, you just had to play with the console dome.light commands until you got them actually shining on the dome, took hours to do. Now nothing I do makes any difference, I'm not even sure that dome.type is working, I think it it used to be type 0 for illuminated and type 1 for full ambient all over, they both look the same now and my dome cloud are stuck at a dingy grey colour.

edit.
I was a bit mystified when this worked, but I just figured out what's going on.
If your going to make a sky dome it has to be one object (xsi frame) with one texture. If you arrange the model so that one part of it is drawn in front of another, the bit in front goes transparent! That's why I cant see the dome clouds properly and why the orbital is nice and solid, because its behind the clouds, doesn't matter weather your using transparency on the texture or not, the thing at the back is solid and what ever is in front of it goes transparent.

[Nielk1]

In ta5 and up the view distance has a big effect on the domes.

[MrTwosheds]

Domes are very singular things A single texture, a single mesh (xsi frame) made from a single primitive object, Now they display correctly, the transparent texture clouds float under the solid texture orbital as you would want them too:) Making the first dome, above from 2 primitives collapsed together caused the cloud part to become transparent and dull grey.
This is not so useful as it severely limits what you can actually make.

[jaydenbz2]

GBD, that no surprise why the edges are light and the middle is dark, the normals are reversed, just reverse them and re-save the .xsi.

*when normals are reversed so are the light dynamics.

TJ, Yes, stock skydomes are infact mapped not with spherical mapping but some kind of distorted planar mapping with tiling they look ok but the hat method can be limited.the best ration for skydome maps is 4:1, so e.g 2048x512 as each quadrilateral sector of the hemisphere is mapped with 512 pixels, a square texture which when multiplied by 4 = 2048.

*also ugly things can happen when uv speed is >0 for any skydome except planar tile mapped ones which are designed to be moved ingame.

[Nielk1]

I mapped one as a cylinder and set a uv speed. It looks cool, but painful at times.

[General BlackDragon]

GBD, that no surprise why the edges are light and the middle is dark, the normals are reversed, just reverse them and re-save the .xsi.

I did that.... The normals are facing down. right?

[MrTwosheds]

Dome.type 0 or 1 ?
what happens if you alter dome.ambient?
When was the .sky made? pre dx9?
did you set up lights then?


Vertex colours don't work when geometry is used as a dome