Skybox generation

[sober]

I am in the need of a skybox for a space-environment. I found a tool (Universe) with that you can paint universes onto a texture up to 1600x1200 and written a little tool, that does 2 things:
- Drawing a base-image like that (you can provide filename and resolution:

Code: Select all

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- Split a Image into 6 Textures
So you generate a basetexture with a border that surrounds the 6 parts of the skybox, load it in universe, paint the universe onto it, perhaps open a graphicprogramm to change some stuff like cutting overlapping stuff and paste it onto the correct part of the box and cut the result into 6 images for a skybox.

My tool doesn't scretch the images to get the best skyboxresults (the corners need to be more scretched, than the center etc) but for spacestuff it works quite well, but its quite difficult to get exactly what you want, because you need to cut&paste overlapping parts yourself as you draw on a 2d texture and aroung 14 borders where on the box are none.

Before I start to programm my own "Universe" that does everything correctly to fullfill the needs for a skybox, I want to ask you if you know such a tool, as it would save alot of time, when I could download a tool instead of develop one.

Sorry, for my bad english, I hope you could understand me. Not native and tired as hell.

[trooper]

Hey There,

Use a SkyDome instead.

Basically a sphere with one texture

http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=15846

Regards

[rayban]

or... what you could do is download blender and use it to build a skybox,
here is a tutorial on how to do it,
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D ... d_a_skybox

if you decide to try it the blender way, i would recommend just painting an
image of 1024x512 or larger of just space and any color variations such as
dust, but dont add the stars yet, then have blender create the 6 images for it
and place them in a 3x2 format on one image which you just crop the pieces
out after.

but as i mentioned, its easier to not add the stars yet, just create the box images and then at the end overlay some stars on it with your choice of paint
program, it gives a better effect that way... and also allows you to edit
out any fish-eye effect on the top and bottom image before the stars are
layed out.

EDIT: if you want, i could toss a quick tutorial together on it to save you
from running into some early problems you might find, just let me know.

[sober]

First: Thanks for the answers, were alittle busy so I didn't looked here for some days.


@trooper: Well, I want to place my game into space, so I need the space at the bottom of the scene too, so a dome wouldn't fit my need

@rayban: I will try your Idea, but some hints on: how to make it right, would be great! I think for others too.

[trooper]

Hey Sober,

If you look at the parameters :

Code: Select all

smgr->addSkyDomeSceneNode(driver->getTexture("media/skydome.jpg"),16,16,1.0f,2.0f); 

1st param - texture & path
2nd param - no or rows
3rd param - no of cols
4th param - percent of texture to use 1.0 = 100%
5th param - 0 to 2.0 - amount of sphere to cover (1.0 = top half only 2.0 full sphere)

So If you used the example code above, you would have a complete dome fully textured

[HondaDarrell]

There is a great tutorial for skyboxes at Gamasutra. There are some space image tutorials too.
With some clever art work you can make some pretty spaceboxes.

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/19981023/bell_01.htm
http://gallery.artofgregmartin.com/tuts ... field.html
http://www.solarvoyager.com/tutorials.asp

Here's one I created.