3
\$\begingroup\$

I'm a freelance game designer, and I can't afford to hire someone to do skyboxes for me.

However, I am unable to do them my self.

Let's say I have a texture that can be tiled on four sides...

If I put that very texture on each side of the skybox.. It just comes out looking like a cube.

I'd like to know how exactly I need to "warp" a texture, so that when applied to a cube on all four sides, it looks spherical.

Thanks! -- G

\$\endgroup\$
1

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
1
\$\begingroup\$

You might want to take a look at Sky Domes. Due to their shape it's a lot easier to get a decent result.

Here you can find a tutorial on how to implement it:

http://www.riemers.net/eng/Tutorials/XNA/Csharp/Series4/Skydome.php

And here's a very nice example of how it can look like if you put some work into it:

.http://sites.google.com/site/wlifeengine/home/screenshots

\$\endgroup\$
1
  • \$\begingroup\$ I'll take a look! The only problem is that the engine I have does not have skydome support built into it's rendering engine -- I'd have to do something like place a large dome over the entire world. Also, I need it to be fully immersive -- The bottom is actually just as important as the top of whatever background method I use. \$\endgroup\$
    – Georges Oates Larsen
    Commented Oct 28, 2010 at 17:48
1
\$\begingroup\$

Why don't you try Terragen? It's a terrain generator that allows you to render to the six faces of a cube and save the images to use them as a skybox.

http://www.planetside.co.uk/

\$\endgroup\$
0
\$\begingroup\$

If you are a programmer talking about skyboxes, I assume you have some knowledge of the 3D engine / librairy / tool you are using. If not, you should ask questions about this engine / librairy / tool to get help on how to create such a skybox (I mean, the programmer job of creating the entity correctly).

Otherwise, all you need is a nice texture to apply to your skybox and there is plenty of websites that will offer you free textures for you to use in your project.

Here are some that I've found :

http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=555904

http://www.tutorialsforblender3d.com/Textures/Skys/Sky_Box_2.html

Here is a tread on BlenderArtist and another from GameDev about it :

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=64228

http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=201602

\$\endgroup\$
3
  • \$\begingroup\$ Those are some REALLY cool links! But unfortunately, for this particular project, none of them will do. I specifically need to be able to warp a texture so that it fits onto a skybox, and looks spherical. I have taken a look a the program's built in skybox generation tools, but they always come out with some form of defect (Huge horizontal stretching, or tight pinches). \$\endgroup\$
    – Georges Oates Larsen
    Commented Oct 28, 2010 at 17:53
  • \$\begingroup\$ Would you be searching for skydome textures perhaps ? \$\endgroup\$
    – Frédérick Imbeault
    Commented Oct 30, 2010 at 16:34
  • \$\begingroup\$ Nope, certainly not. Unity3D has the ability to warp textures into skybox applicable textures, but they do not come out well at all. \$\endgroup\$
    – Georges Oates Larsen
    Commented Mar 1, 2011 at 4:56

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .