Guild of Writers

Hi all,

I'm planning on starting a new age and I'm planning on it being outside, which means I need to make a seamless skydome texture, the only problem is that making and using skydome textures is something I have not yet attempted before.

So I was wondering if you all could give me a few pointers I need to know

1. Tips for making a good and detailed skydome texture
2. Knowing the right way to model and UV map it in blender


Thanks!

I use the CGTextures skydome textures. I think that Your-First-Age tutorial has some info about how to map the dome.

The funny thing about my RAD age (Tre'bivdil) is that the sky was being worked on up to the deadline. The problem I faced was that it looked all pixelly and not smooth at all. Since skies really make the age sometimes I wanted it to look all nice a smooth.

What I ended up doing is having a slightly smaller skydome mapped with clouds and an outer non-textured vertex-painted skydome. The important thing to note is that skies look best when the horizon has a slight greenish color (or at least for daytime). I learned this trick from how Cyan did the Cleft sky.

Cyan also, in many cases, doesn't use a huge image like in the my first age tutorial. They use a very small gradient for the sky color and add clouds on top of that.

Whilyam wrote:Cyan also, in many cases, doesn't use a huge image like in the my first age tutorial. They use a very small gradient for the sky color and add clouds on top of that.

Actually they do. The sky gradient was used in Eder Gira to utilize the change from night to day. Most everywhere else however had actual sky textures. Each age having its own unique sky texture. But they're all relatively small files, 512x256 usually.

GPNMilano wrote:

Whilyam wrote:Cyan also, in many cases, doesn't use a huge image like in the my first age tutorial. They use a very small gradient for the sky color and add clouds on top of that.

Actually they do. The sky gradient was used in Eder Gira to utilize the change from night to day. Most everywhere else however had actual sky textures. Each age having its own unique sky texture. But they're all relatively small files, 512x256 usually.

Right, but none of them are as giant, nor as complex as the one in the tutorial. Also there are many other examples of gradients being used. Laki'ahn, Noloben, and Er'cana are the ones that immediately come to mind. The only age I can think of that uses sky textures anywhere close to the sizes shown in the tutorial is Ahnonay and even then the sky textures are only 1024x512 which makes it half the size of the tutorial's.

Whilyam wrote:

GPNMilano wrote:

Whilyam wrote:Cyan also, in many cases, doesn't use a huge image like in the my first age tutorial. They use a very small gradient for the sky color and add clouds on top of that.

Actually they do. The sky gradient was used in Eder Gira to utilize the change from night to day. Most everywhere else however had actual sky textures. Each age having its own unique sky texture. But they're all relatively small files, 512x256 usually.

Right, but none of them are as giant, nor as complex as the one in the tutorial. Also there are many other examples of gradients being used. Laki'ahn, Noloben, and Er'cana are the ones that immediately come to mind. The only age I can think of that uses sky textures anywhere close to the sizes shown in the tutorial is Ahnonay and even then the sky textures are only 1024x512 which makes it half the size of the tutorial's.

Yes, but I was mainly thinking of Uru, which is why I didn't include Laki'ahn and Noloben, as Myst V had various ages with incomplete areas anyway because the Avatar would never be able to go there, and never be able to see it. Releeshan for example had only 3/4 of a dome that encompassed the entire age, serving as both part of the ground and part of the sky.

Also gira, while using a gradient, its stary sky mipmap was a large mipmap, 1024x1024. while ercana, as you pointed out, used a gradient, its clouds and mountain view backdrops were 1024x1024.

Sky domes and backdrops are in essence all dependent on what kind of age you are in. if you only need a skydome than you should stick to smaller textures, however if there are vista scenes (like mountains, starry skies, cloud covers etc) than larger scale images give a better detailed view of the sky.

Surely you can just do vertex painting, with a cloud texture overlay?

You can do this directly in Blender without the need to import specific textures, unless of course it has to contain mountains/vistas/distant villages

Grogyan wrote:Surely you can just do vertex painting, with a cloud texture overlay?

You can do this directly in Blender without the need to import specific textures, unless of course it has to contain mountains/vistas/distant villages

Of course.

Again it all depends on what you want the user to see and how much of it. There's many ways to go about making a correct sky, and it really depends on how much of the sky you want visible vs what surrounds the "exploreable" area of the age.