Today many maps lack the simple, yet majestic 3d skybox. What is a 3d skybox? it’s a simple way of making your map look much larger and it adds more detail with less lag and a higher fps. A 3d skybox is a area of the map that is inaccessible to a player, but projects itself over the map as if it were 16 times larger. As you can see this can greatly add to the feeling of your map, because even if your out of room you can still make your map look vastly larger. Want to add that city horizon that just won’t fit in? 3D skybox it! Want to add a huge mountain range on the horizon but it lags too much? 3D skybox it!
This tutorial is very simple and tries to explain making a 3D skybox. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions I beg of you to post them.
Well here we go…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Making a 3D Skybox
Open up your hammer.
Make a simple box with skybox walls and ceiling and a grass floor (or whatever texture you wish).
Then expand the grassy floor somewhat; At least two times larger than it was originally, but it doesn’t need to be exact so don’t fuss over it.
Then start to clip around the excess grass brush that you just made.
So that it will look like this.
Now this is very important: you must create a sky_camera entity at the exact origin of the map. The origin is were the blue lines on the 2d views cross; make sure that it is at the exact center!
Once that is done select the sky_camera and all the excess grass brushes that you have created.
Go to tools>transform then a window will pop up. In it go to scale and enter .0625 into all the little text areas, then hit ok.
Once that is done the area that you have shrunk will most likely disapear into the original grass brush.
Move it, without reselecting it, to an area off them map. Distance doesn’t really matter just make sure it’s not in the map. Once you have done this add a skybox around it.
I know this might confuse you but go back to your main map area. Without changing the size of the grass brush just move the skybox off the grass brush so that only the edges of the skybox and grass brush touch. This is important that they do not remain flush otherwise you will have a funky gap between your map and the skybox.
Now you can add stuff to your 3d skybox like displacements and props. There are special mini buildings meant for the skybox. Just search skybox or something in the model browser.
You should also change the texture size so that your main map and the skybox blend perfectly. Just change the scale of any texture in your 3D skybox to .02 and your set.
The last thing you must do is copy a light environment from your main map to the 3d skybox.
Presto! Your done!
Recent Comments