A STANDARD SKYBOX SPECIFICATION

 "Machismo"
cool_machismo@yahoo.com

WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT

There are a lot of tutorials on the web dealing with how to create a skybox and a ton more on this site. But for those of you who have read these tutorials and are still not able to make a good one I have included the complete measurements that I have used for getting a good skybox. Admittedly this will stifle the process of creative thinking. But hopefully at the end of it you will be better off than when you started the tutorial.

HOW DO THEY GET THOSE GREAT SKYBOXES?

Here are the exact steps that I followed in creating a skybox:

1. Load genfluid, shanesky, shaneday and skybox by hitting the load button under the texture menu on the right. They have all the cool sky textures that you will need to create a a nice sky.

2. Choose a nice sky texture from genfluid. Build a cube 256x2304x2304 by editing the properties of the cube. With that done hit the subtract button (second button on the third column)  or ctrl+s. This will be referred to as the first box for the rest of the tutorial.

3. Choose the DBottm texture from shaneday and apply it to the floor of this box.

4. Build a smaller cube 128x576x576 and using the side view place it below the first large cube that we made. Now in the overhead view center it exactly so that its in the middle of the box. Choose the GRD texture from skybox and subtract it. Your box should look like this now.

5. We are going to use the sheet builder to create mountains within the second box. You need to do this so that in outdoor levels it'll look like your map is in the middle of a mountain. Build a sheet with orientation set to X or Y wall, and size U=256 and V=256. I turned the gird down to 16 units and in the overhead view I placed it two units away from the second box and in the side view I let the sheet touch the bottom. For now the texture of the sheet does not matter. Hit the add special button with the following checked:

6. See that the sheet that we added in is still selected (select it if it is not) - it will be pinkish in color. Use the overhead view for the rest of this step. Hit crtl+w exactly 7 times so that this brush is duplicated that many times. Still using the overhead view rotate each brush and place them in such a manner that they form another cube within the second cube that we subtracted. You should now have 2 added in brushes to the north, 2 to the east, 2 to the west and 2 to the south. Zoom in (turn the gird down if you have to) and check that all the edges of all the added in brushes are touching. The level should look like this in the overhead view now:

7. Load skybox if its not loaded yet, you should see some textures numbered sequentially like 2_1, 2_2, etc. This is used to give a continuous but yet dissimilar look to your mountains. Ok go to the first sheet in the 3d view and apply texture 2_1, the next one 2_2 and so on. If all is not sufficient you can still use the same textures. Also the similar looking mountains all have the same starting number so you will be well advised to use the same group throughout your skybox. Select all 8 mountain surfaces by holding ctrl and left clicking on each. Go to their surface properties - F5 - and under the scale tab in custom scaling enter 1 for texture u and 2 for texture v. Hit the apply button. It should look like this now:
 

8. Build a sheet 2304x2304 floor/ceiling orientation. This is going to be the sky. Place it so that it fits over the first large box exactly in the overhead view. Move the sheet so that its just a few units below the top of the first box. Hit the add special button, choose regular brush from the drop down menu and make sure that regular, 2-sided and semisolid is checked under the various options. Go to the surface property of the sky that we just now added and check u-pan under the effects tab. This makes it look like the clouds are rolling across the sky.

9. Now for the sun (could be a moon or nebula or what you want but for now we'll just add in this). Choose flare10 from shaneday. Build a sheet 128x128. Place it above the mountains but below the sky, place it near the mountains and do some rotation so that its faces inwards towards the mountain. Hit the add special button, choose regular brush from the drop down menu check that 2-sided and transparent (under effects) is checked and hit add special. You should have a nice sun in your skybox. Do a crtl+w of the sun and place it at the other side and in a few other places. This is the way to add in moons, nebulas, etc. I almost always set their surface properties to unlit as they look quite ugly otherwise. This is how it should look like now:

10. This is the most interesting part. I expect you to have read a colored lighting tutorial. The lighting that you apply to the sky will determine how dramatic it will be in the when it appears in the level. I used a total of 7 pairs of lights - I placed them just beneath the sky with all the pairs scattered over the skybox. All the lights had their properties with light brightness set to 64 and light saturation to 100. The only value of difference is of course the light hue. These are the values that I used -  blue 175; green 134; red 0; pink 18;etc. 

11. From the pull down menu on the right choose classes. Expand info, zone info and select skyzoneinfo without expanding it and add it into your skybox (right click in the center of the mountains box and hit add skyzoneinfo here, if you were to place it anywhere else it would look cock-eyed). This tells UT that this is a skybox and has to appear in your level.

12. Build a cube 1024x2048x2048 choose a nice rock texture from genearth and subtract it. Set the surface property of the ceiling of the room to fake backdrop so that your skybox shows up in the level. You could go ahead and add lights to the rest of the room but since this is a tutorial just select all the remaining five surfaces and check unlit in their surface properties. Add in a player start from under navigation point in classes. Rebuild geometry and lighting. Fire it up in unreal tournament and it should look like this:

GENERAL SKYBOX NOTES

• Now that you've checked it out in your level and found that it rocks you need to save it. Build a larger brush than the skybox and hit the deintersect button or ctrl+d. Go to the brush export menu and give it a name and hit save. Now whenever you have a level and need a standard looking skybox just hit import brush find where you saved it and open it up - leave the merge coplanar polygons checked in the import brush dialog.

• You can use just red or orange lighting in your skybox and check out the effect. The lighting is a very important part of the skybox - I would say most important as it is the lighting that makes a level stand out.

• You remember in step 8 where we made the clouds look like they were rolling across the sky? Here is a tip that most people seem to ignore. The speed at which the clouds roll across may be fine but what if you want them to move faster?. Simple expand the sky zone infos properties and expand zone light. Here you will see two fields called TextureUPanSpeed and TextureVPanSpeed, you need to alter one of these values. Since in step 8 we made the clouds go in the u-pan direction set upan speed to around 4, hit the little joystick button in the 3d view so that it is unchecked (this turns on real time) and see how fast the clouds roll across. Remember this property can be used in any zone info actor.

• One cool way in which to achieve the effect of a night sky  is to give the ceiling of the skybox (the first box) a night texture from genfluid, set its surface property to unlit and set the surface property of the sky to transparent. It will look like this in the level:
  

• In step 8 when I asked you to set the u-pan speed to make it seem that the clouds are rolling across the sky, you will notice that the clouds move across at a default speed. To make the texture pan slower or faster go to the sky zone info's properties and under ZoneLight you will find two entries called TexUPanSpeed and TexVPanSpeed. Now if you want the texture to "scroll" across faster set the UPanSpeed to a higher value and if you want the texture to scroll across slower just lower the value. You'll find that the clouds will move across faster - try a value of 10. One thing to note you can use this in any zone infos not just in the sky zone info.

• I usually end up building the whole skybox out of non-solid brushes as this can conserve resources.

• As I said before don't confine yourself creatively to standard skyboxes. Levels that really stand out and are appreciated will have some surprising effects used in their skyboxes like Facing Worlds. Like the Bon Jovi song "its just the same old sites and the same old sound ........ the same old shit is going around" - don't do that.

1. castle1.utx

2. city.utx - If you build any city kinda levels you'll find everything for your sky box here.

3. DDayFx.utx - The AS-Overlord skybox textures.

4. EgyptPan.utx - For an Egyptian SkyBox full of pyramids.

5. eol.utx - Just one moon texture.

6. FractalFX.utx

7. genfluid.utx (sub-class sky) - The base package that contains the most amount of sky type textures that you can use in your level.

8. GenFx.utx (subclass lensflar)- This texture package contains flares (which can be used as suns).

9. GenTerra.utx

10. Genwarp.utx

11. Hubeffects.utx - Nice lightning textures.

12. Indus1.utx (subclass skybox) - Nice misty textures and some general ones.

13. Indus3.utx

14. Indus6.utx (subclass sky1) - DM-KGalleon skybox.

15. JWSky.utx - Contains some great haze textures. Also has the SkyCity textures.

16. NaliFX.utx

17. ShaneChurch.utx - Two moons.

18. ShaneDay.utx - Snowy mountains textures. Also contains the two textures DaySkyB and DBottm that are used as a sky box base in many, many levels.

19. ShaneSky.utx

20. SkyBox.utx - Need I say more? :).

21. SpaceFX - Contains the best nebula textures and the earth sky box textures (one 512x512 texture and 4 textures to build huge sky boxes with the earth in it).

22. XbpFX - These are the "Innox textures". Used by Innox to make the CTF-Face and DM-Phobos levels skyboxes. Contains the mars textures, earth textures, a few nebulas and a night sky texture.

23. XFX.utx - Has an extremely cool lightning texture and some other effects.