High Quality Skyboxes

(Avoc) #41

However, those renderfarms are only manual for Vue. Meaning you need to upload, send a mail to the guy, and hope you are not number 35 in line. For sky rendering purposes, this will often take longer than just doing it yourself. Renderfarms are mostly used for rendering animations.

(Avoc) #42

New Sky released:

Check OP for download :slight_smile:

(Pegazus) #43

Nice sky, i love sunsets, good job :slight_smile:

(Avoc) #44

Thanks =)

Map test is about to begin. If you want to join just /connect avoc.eft-clan.com:27980

(shagileo) #45

As always, great job Avoc

(Pande) #46

Just tried the map. Even after reassuring myself with the shader, (nomipmap and nopicmips inside it) I still see way to much compression going on. (I play on highest quality in base ET for testing maps)

Anyway, I looked at your skybox images and was dismayed to see that the compression artifacts are in the image itself. :o

I hope you have originals kicking around. :s

(Avoc) #47

Ah yes, I just noticed. I uploaded the highly compressed ones :smiley:
Thats what happens when you have too many things going on. :confused:

Got the originals on my laptop, will notify when I have uploaded it.

(eiM) #48

How much percent of my skybox is already rendered Avoc? ;D No need to hurry btw the map is not close to beta yet.

(Pande) #49

Ah, good to hear! Sucks to have a low quality 2048^2 image. xD Kinda defeats the purpose. :slight_smile:

(Avoc) #50

I have now uploaded the high quality version. The link is the same as in the OP =)

@ Pande: True that :smiley:

@ eiM: I have decided to scrap that sky, 50+ hours PER SIDE was too extreme I think, so I will rework it.
I have in the meantime finished rendering a different sky which I am in the process of making a shader + moving clouds for. Its somewhat in the same style as the skybox that I had to scrap, but not as dark.

(Pande) #51

ya nail i got the xfrog models :slight_smile:

(Nail) #52

free is always good

:slight_smile:

(Futan21) #53

Sorry to take this off-topic a bit, but how do you get this to work with clouds? I’ve only tried night skies but whenever I do, it will look okay in darker brightness settings but when it’s turned up, it shows nasty green and purple spots. The images themselves look good, only in game does it happen.

(Avoc) #54

How I get the skyboxes to work with clouds you mean?

Well, the skyboxes I have made so far have not had clouds in them for the simple reason that it wouldn’t look good. Most skyboxes will demand a costum made cloud texture that has a perfectly tuned color that matches the sky itself. A good example of this is in Praetoria.

Simply because a texture looks good in your image editor, does not mean it will look good in-game, and vica-versa.

I will be releasing a skybox later today, and a one thing else that should help people easily add clouds to their own skies =)

(Futan21) #55

I meant with Vue, I’m sorry. My roommate has it and I’ve been trying to use it. Admittedly, I haven’t been using the highest possible settings but he said a lot of it would have very little affect but raise the render time a ton.

I can make a night sky without clouds and it look great in the game but as soon as I add clouds by editing the Atmosphere, it looks bloody horrible. Purple and green patches surrounding the clouds.

I guess the things that have “very little affect” turn into a very big affect when made into a skybox?

(Avoc) #56

Which version is it?

Anyway, you won’t achieve much by using the standard settings to render your picture. “Final” settings might be good for smaller pictures, but when you are rendering at the resolutions which I am rendering at, you really need to use “Superior”

Why else would you think that it takes me so many hours just to render 1 side of the skybox? =D

There are also some quality booster settings in the atmosphere editor which you most likely do not applied. This will of course slow your rendering down with [X]%, depending on how much you will have boosted it.

In other news, I have finished another skybox which you can find in the OP.
This skybox has two different versions. The regular one, and a “frost” version which looks especially good in snow maps.

Either early tomorrow or on saturday I will show everyone a few highly detailed clouds which they can “copy + paste” into their own skies. For obvious reasons, having a 2048 x 2048 skybox + a highly detailed cloud is not recommended to add to a map, since the .pk3 size for just the sky alone would be more than the average map. I have a solution to this, but more on that a bit later =)

I will make a few more of these types of skyboxes, and then I will make some with actual mountains/terrain/water.

Hope you enjoy!

(Magic) #57

What are trying to do mr Avoc - you want all players to drop their weapons and just look at the sky :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

The last one looks great.
I have downloaded Vue - when i get some time - i will play around myself.

(Pande) #58

again, i see compression on the sky (blue part).

(Avoc) #59

That isn’t compression, that is simply the way the sky is rendered. You are talking about the “grain” right?

Nothing really to do about it, except perhaps manually blur those areas.

And I can only see that grain when I am cov op and zoom 8x into the sky with the sniper.

(Pande) #60

no, im talking about the compression lines. Redish colors in the blue sky.