using blender to generate a 3D skybox

Question

Is it possible for me to use Blender to generate a 3D skybox?

The concept is fairly simple: I create a scene that I want to display on the skybox (mountains, clouds, water, etc). Then, couldn't Blender render it from the origin, calculating the images that would be placed on the six sides of the skybox?

Is there a way of doing this? It'd be a very easy way of making one's own skyboxes...

Answer 1

The wikibook Blender 3D: Noob to Pro covers this.

Jump down to the "Render an Environment Map" section.

• Set up your Scene, including an object (you can use an Empty) for the location of the skybox.
• Create a new material for the object
• Create a new texture for that material. Change its type to EnvMap (environment map)
• Check [Static] or [Anim] for whether you want to render it once or every frame of an animation
• Set the [Ob: ] field for the texture to your object. This determines where the rendered skybox is centered.
• Set CubeRes to your desired resolution
• Optionally set Clip distances if you have clipping issues
• Render the scene
• Go back to the textures pane of your object and click [Save EnvMap]

After rendering, the textures pane should look like this: