animated clouds all over the place

(Camper) #1

Hi all,

I use a skybox created with terragen and now i want some animated clouds in there :slight_smile:

So with the help of the fueldump shader i modified my sky shader. But now i have animated clouds at every side of the sky (except the floor). And i want to build a realistic map ffs! So only clouds at skybox_up.

The sky shader:

textures/mymap/test_sky
{
qer_editorimage textures/mymap/test_sky.tga

surfaceparm noimpact
surfaceparm nolightmap
surfaceparm sky

q3map_sun 0.5 0.5 0.5 150 -70 45
q3map_surfacelight 85

skyparms env/test/test_sky 4600 -
{
	map textures/skies/fueldump_clouds.tga
	blendfunc add
	tcMod scroll 0.005 0.00
	tcMod scale 2 1
}

}

Can any of u guru’s help me out with this problem?

(Camper) #2

euhm…anyone? All i want to know is its normal for animated clouds to animate over the whole skybox and if not how to edit my shader correctly.

(EB) #3

http://www.planetquake.com/simland/pages/materials.htm
http://q3.beyondirc.net/tutorials/skybox-tut.txt
http://shaderlab.com/q3map2/shader_manual/contents.html

Never tried it before…but here are some links for you to ponder it upon.

change blendfunc add to>>> blendFunc GL_SRC_ALPHA GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA
but you’re still going to have a sphere-like of clouds rotating in the skybox.

Create your map sides(skybox like) and use large brushes with the textures being made to “fit”, then wrap the map in a fueldump clouds skybox. You’d probably want the box sides to alpha out in the sky area so the clouds will appear to set behind them.
Only an idea.

(Camper) #4

Thanks for your reply.

I dont understand what u mean with:

“You’d probably want the box sides to alpha out in the sky area so the clouds will appear to set behind them.”

Can you explain your idea some more?

Thanks :slight_smile:

(EB) #5

to go clear/see thru…you’d see the mountains but then the upper part of the brush would be transparent. Or not even there if you’re able to manipulate brushes well.

(Camper) #6

I have very limited shader experience but as far as i know the cloud texture has an alpha channel so that gets transparent and the terragen skybox shows thru.

I’m afraid your idea wouldnt work or atleast i couldnt get it to work. :frowning:
Thanks anyways though.

Maybe some shaderguru can correct me? (help me out plz)

(]UBC[ McNite) #7

Maybe not exactly what u r searching for, but have a look at the map The River II… with high terrain all around the fighting area you can solve your problem without any shader-mess or alpha-blending. It will increase your TRIS-count a bit though.

(The Wanderer) #8

use a “skymask” to fade out the clouds on the sides of the skybox. And since that makes no sense by itself here’s a sample map made by ydnar that shows how to do this.
The skymask is the last stage of his sky shader. Use the sky_mask.tga image he’s used for your mask, just change the surrounding color from beige to whatever you need it for your sky.

(Camper) #9

@]UBC[ McNite

The player is able to see most of the skybox the whole time. I cant use terrain to block the skybox because it would change the map too much. (player is on top of a mountain)

@The Wanderer

These clouds are really nice! Now the mask prevents the player to see the terragen skybox though (but floor is still visible).
I would actually need a mask that filters out clouds but not the skybox. Aaaah this is getting complicated. Maybe i just need to skip the clouds and finish the map first.

Thx ppl

(]UBC[ McNite) #10

Your short description (player is on top of a mountain) sounds to me like the whole terrain will be drawn by teh engine for that player because you dont have any VIS-blocking… (?) If I m right about your maplayout you might be running into deep trouble regarding the FPS. (The map 2 Towers by Loffy has that problem and gives me the worst FPS i ever experienced on a map… less than 10FPS in a lot of places).

If u like, plz post a sketch of your maplayout and we can have a short look here.

(Camper) #11

Y i guess all of the terrain will be drawn…I try to keep the map small me thinks.
The real problem is to design some nice gameplay/flow, i keep changing alot only to find out it becomes too boring…So forget about a sketch for now. But 10FPS is ofcourse very low and im changing the layout for sure if fps becomes a real prob.