This may be of interest to you guys since it pretty comes close to far-cry quality of water/skies. What it basically is, is a sky-dome with 2 layers of moving cloudtextures and a single covering dome with a gradient. This way you can create any type clouds and colors which you want to have and the results were astonishing. Yes there are some slight issues:

- How to optimize this ?
- There is a slight white line at the horizon but this is due to the fact that I wasn't to precise when making this. This was just a test. In a production environment I'ld stick the layers so close to each other that these artefacts will not show up. Now they are kind of apart.
- If you walk totally up to the edge of the dome you can see that it's not a generated skytexture but actually just moving layers of flat textures. But because the dome is so big, that shouldn't happen at all. And poses no problem.

This can be tweaked *lots* more.

I will leave the tweaking up to you guys.

You should make an extra layer at the horizon which will make it so the clouds seem to stretch into the horizon. You can add a planet / moon or sun to this easily. And you can change the entire look of this by adjusting the three textures that come with it for the clouds and the gradient. Red dusk skies or nighttime skies with stars are easily possible. You can add as much cloud layers as you'ld like as well.

You should see this in action, it looks lovely as the layers of clouds drift past eachother. :wink:

I will be releasing this by the end of this day and if you guys want to use it, be my guest!

*updated*
I just uploaded an updated version which looks better, you should check it out as it's more representative of what's possible:
http://doom3.filefront.com/file/High_Qu ... dome;38046

^^^^^This is a new link as of 10/20/2006

Extract into your doom3 directory (not your base directory).
And type 'map sky_box' that should put you into this map.

Wire:

If we can get it nice and optimised, hell yes, it'd add a lovely summers day feel to Doom which certainly never existed in the first one.

Lucky for us, you can't get to the edge of the map, so you'd never get close enough to use it.

The only thing I can think of though, is how would it work with the sun script?

Would it be possible to place the sun entity below the sky, but above the clouds? Then we could just use a scrolling clouds shader to fake the shadows (Q3 used one for its Terrain maps if you're wondering what I mean), as realistic cloud shadows (soft shadows with soft lighting) would be extremely hard to get working right in D3. If we got the clouds shader big enough, and worked it out so it was in line with the scrolling clouds, we could have a cool 'sun going in' effect as it moves behind the clouds. Coupled with a custom sun flare effect, this could look great.

Lol, I think I'm maybe a bit ahead of myself now though.

I'm impressed. I've been toying around with a few ideas for making convincing skies and this looks to be a good contender.

One question though, how big of a performance hit is it?

Bauul wrote:

If we can get it nice and optimised, hell yes, it'd add a lovely summers day feel to Doom which certainly never existed in the first one.

I don't think optimisation is any much more of an issue as it is now for the D3CDIT project.

Quote:

Lucky for us, you can't get to the edge of the map, so you'd never get close enough to use it.

The only thing I can think of though, is how would it work with the sun script?

Would it be possible to place the sun entity below the sky, but above the clouds?

I don't see why not. As it is now there is more than enough space inside the model to stick it in. But any modeller can recreate this as soon as they see how it's done to further tweak so the sun can go in and hide behind the clouds.

Quote:

Then we could just use a scrolling clouds shader to fake the shadows (Q3 used one for its Terrain maps if you're wondering what I mean), as realistic cloud shadows (soft shadows with soft lighting) would be extremely hard to get working right in D3. If we got the clouds shader big enough, and worked it out so it was in line with the scrolling clouds, we could have a cool 'sun going in' effect as it moves behind the clouds. Coupled with a custom sun flare effect, this could look great.

Lol, I think I'm maybe a bit ahead of myself now though.

Sun flare is one thing I've been wanting to make for the D3 engine for months now. But I don't know where to start. Let me think more on this.

Renzatic wrote:

I'm impressed. I've been toying around with a few ideas for making convincing skies and this looks to be a good contender.

One question though, how big is the hit to performance?

Almost nill. This is a *big* map and it's running fine 30+ fps on my slow molasses machine. The fps counts you see in the screens are because I still had 3dsmax and the editor open in the background. :wink:

Quote:

Almost nill. This is a *big* map and it's running fine 30+ fps on my slow molasses machine. The fps counts you see in the screens are because I still had 3dsmax and the editor open in the background.

Cool to know.

Even though having the editor and Max running in the background is a big ass resource hog, I'm still worried about how it'll impact performance in a 5000 brush map with all the bells and whistles.

That sphere is alot of extra polys being drawn, there has to be a cleaner way to implement it and still achieve the same effect.

Renzatic wrote:

Quote:

Almost nill. This is a *big* map and it's running fine 30+ fps on my slow molasses machine. The fps counts you see in the screens are because I still had 3dsmax and the editor open in the background.

Cool to know.

Even though having the editor and Max running in the background is a big ass resource hog, I'm still worried about how it'll impact performance in a 5000 brush map with all the bells and whistles.

That sphere is alot of extra polys being drawn, there has to be a cleaner way to implement it and still achieve the same effect.

Polies is not the thing that impacts performance on maps in D3. It's polies that receive /cast specularlighting/shadows/normalmaps. All of which don't apply to the skydome.

In fact, I'm sure that one smoke emitter has twice more polies and performance impact than this skydome has. In comparison, the BFG has more tris than the skydome has.

just checked this out and one word:

wow

very strange, if I'm walking i get 55-60 fps with the occasional drop to 20, but if im standing still it's constant 18-23 fps.

most of it looks pretty good but not good enough for the performance hit, plus the water looks good in a screenshot but in game looks like plastic wrap in 5:00 traffic

djester wrote:

very strange, if I'm walking i get 55-60 fps with the occasional drop to 20, but if im standing still it's constant 18-23 fps.

most of it looks pretty good but not good enough for the performance hit, plus the water looks good in a screenshot but in game looks like plastic wrap in 5:00 traffic

Well, since it's not about the water but the skybox I wouldn't worry about that. :wink:

I don't have *any* performance drop at all with this sky. If you do experience one then it's because of the water and not the sky. The skydome mesh has 1008 tri's, these tris do not cast shadows, do not receive any light whatsoever nor do they receive specularity.

Compare that to the soulcube which has 1574 tris and I know that a performance drop due to this skydome is extremely unlikely if not impossible, and certainly negligable.

The performance hit you're experiencing is due to the heathaze effect on the water.

I'll make a single map with a normal sky texure and then the same one with the dome to see what the performance does.

looks nice blood.

here's an idea after looking at the dome pics (i did not download it). what if you did a flat sky instead of a curved dome? a VERY wide and VERY long single poly flat sky? make it so wide that it seems to stretch to the horizon (or just far enough depending on what the player can actually see). and then have the cloud textures scroll across that? that way the clouds would get smaller as they move across the sky.

just an idea...

djester, you're probably testing this with the editor open... that's why you have the bad performance when you stand still. Never test anything map's performance while in the editor.

G

This is truly funny. The skydome performs 10-12 fps *better* than the regular texGen sky textures!

Remember, a texGen sky needs 6 textures of atleast 512x512 to work. The skydome only needs 3 plus a sky texgen needs extra calculations all the time to account for p.o.v. That's most likely the reason for so much of a performance gain in favor of the skydome.

Screens / Skydome:
80 fps

78 fps

Screens / regular texgen:
67 fps

65 fps

67 fps

I guess it all comes down to the implementation as was already said by someone earlier.

If you had a map wrapped in a sky of this style then it'd be very wasteful resources, but for an open area like D3CDIT and other city-style areas its a great way to increase performance that extra bit

Anyway, its a really nice effect and if its less of a hit on the performance front all I can say again is "wow" and well done

Did they use that in the doom3 can do it too project that they released the other day ?

this is awesome bloodRayne, I was getting a bit depressed the other night after watching some quake 3 trick jumping video where one of the levels was basically floating in space with a beautiful sky above and the sea below. I thought to myself "dang! why hasn't anyone figured out how to do that in doom 3 yet". So now I am extremeyl excited to download your map and check it out when I get home.

I was curious if you knew what would happen if you wrapped the whole level in a hollow sphere instead of half a sphere - could you acheive a "level hanging in space" effect?

One thing, the water kinda moves too fast to look real...other than that, it's really good!

I've toyed with this a bit and put it into the current test-build. It looks really sweet, even on a model twice the size as what you had... and, like your tests indicate, there's actually a slight performance boost compared with the typical skybox. Of course, w/ the D3CDIT project, there's less of a benefit, but every little bit helps.

G

I can't wait to see it in the new test build, it's actually probably one of the nicest looking skies I've ever seen in a game.

dfloss wrote:

I was curious if you knew what would happen if you wrapped the whole level in a hollow sphere instead of half a sphere - could you acheive a "level hanging in space" effect?

I don't see why this shouldn't work. You can easilly do this with a sphere and a nice 'space' texture.

goliathvt wrote:

I've toyed with this a bit and put it into the current test-build. It looks really sweet, even on a model twice the size as what you had... and, like your tests indicate, there's actually a slight performance boost compared with the typical skybox. Of course, w/ the D3CDIT project, there's less of a benefit, but every little bit helps.

G

Sweet. Can't wait to see it inside the project, allways glad to help! :wink:

This map isn't working. Followed the directions, but no good.

Extracted it to the doom 3 directory, then tried leaving it as the plain pk4 file. Then tried base, and a seperate folder in base. No matter what, map sky_box in the console doesn't load up the map.

This may be of interest to you guys since it pretty comes close to far-cry quality of water/skies. What it basically is, is a sky-dome with 2 layers of moving cloudtextures and a single covering dome with a gradient. This way you can create any type clouds and colors which you want to have and the results were astonishing. Yes there are some slight issues:

- How to optimize this ?
- There is a slight white line at the horizon but this is due to the fact that I wasn't to precise when making this. This was just a test. In a production environment I'ld stick the layers so close to each other that these artefacts will not show up. Now they are kind of apart.
- If you walk totally up to the edge of the dome you can see that it's not a generated skytexture but actually just moving layers of flat textures. But because the dome is so big, that shouldn't happen at all. And poses no problem.

This can be tweaked *lots* more.

I will leave the tweaking up to you guys.

You should make an extra layer at the horizon which will make it so the clouds seem to stretch into the horizon. You can add a planet / moon or sun to this easily. And you can change the entire look of this by adjusting the three textures that come with it for the clouds and the gradient. Red dusk skies or nighttime skies with stars are easily possible. You can add as much cloud layers as you'ld like as well.

You should see this in action, it looks lovely as the layers of clouds drift past eachother. :wink:

I will be releasing this by the end of this day and if you guys want to use it, be my guest!

*updated*
I just uploaded an updated version which looks better, you should check it out as it's more representative of what's possible:
http://doom3.filefront.com/file/High_Qu ... dome;38046

^^^^^This is a new link as of 10/20/2006

Extract into your doom3 directory (not your base directory).
And type 'map sky_box' that should put you into this map.

Wire:

If we can get it nice and optimised, hell yes, it'd add a lovely summers day feel to Doom which certainly never existed in the first one.

Lucky for us, you can't get to the edge of the map, so you'd never get close enough to use it.

The only thing I can think of though, is how would it work with the sun script?

Would it be possible to place the sun entity below the sky, but above the clouds? Then we could just use a scrolling clouds shader to fake the shadows (Q3 used one for its Terrain maps if you're wondering what I mean), as realistic cloud shadows (soft shadows with soft lighting) would be extremely hard to get working right in D3. If we got the clouds shader big enough, and worked it out so it was in line with the scrolling clouds, we could have a cool 'sun going in' effect as it moves behind the clouds. Coupled with a custom sun flare effect, this could look great.

Lol, I think I'm maybe a bit ahead of myself now though.

I'm impressed. I've been toying around with a few ideas for making convincing skies and this looks to be a good contender.

One question though, how big of a performance hit is it?

Bauul wrote:

If we can get it nice and optimised, hell yes, it'd add a lovely summers day feel to Doom which certainly never existed in the first one.

I don't think optimisation is any much more of an issue as it is now for the D3CDIT project.

Quote:

Lucky for us, you can't get to the edge of the map, so you'd never get close enough to use it.

The only thing I can think of though, is how would it work with the sun script?

Would it be possible to place the sun entity below the sky, but above the clouds?

I don't see why not. As it is now there is more than enough space inside the model to stick it in. But any modeller can recreate this as soon as they see how it's done to further tweak so the sun can go in and hide behind the clouds.

Quote:

Then we could just use a scrolling clouds shader to fake the shadows (Q3 used one for its Terrain maps if you're wondering what I mean), as realistic cloud shadows (soft shadows with soft lighting) would be extremely hard to get working right in D3. If we got the clouds shader big enough, and worked it out so it was in line with the scrolling clouds, we could have a cool 'sun going in' effect as it moves behind the clouds. Coupled with a custom sun flare effect, this could look great.

Lol, I think I'm maybe a bit ahead of myself now though.

Sun flare is one thing I've been wanting to make for the D3 engine for months now. But I don't know where to start. Let me think more on this.

Renzatic wrote:

I'm impressed. I've been toying around with a few ideas for making convincing skies and this looks to be a good contender.

One question though, how big is the hit to performance?

Almost nill. This is a *big* map and it's running fine 30+ fps on my slow molasses machine. The fps counts you see in the screens are because I still had 3dsmax and the editor open in the background. :wink:

Quote:

Almost nill. This is a *big* map and it's running fine 30+ fps on my slow molasses machine. The fps counts you see in the screens are because I still had 3dsmax and the editor open in the background.

Cool to know.

Even though having the editor and Max running in the background is a big ass resource hog, I'm still worried about how it'll impact performance in a 5000 brush map with all the bells and whistles.

That sphere is alot of extra polys being drawn, there has to be a cleaner way to implement it and still achieve the same effect.

Renzatic wrote:

Quote:

Almost nill. This is a *big* map and it's running fine 30+ fps on my slow molasses machine. The fps counts you see in the screens are because I still had 3dsmax and the editor open in the background.

Cool to know.

Even though having the editor and Max running in the background is a big ass resource hog, I'm still worried about how it'll impact performance in a 5000 brush map with all the bells and whistles.

That sphere is alot of extra polys being drawn, there has to be a cleaner way to implement it and still achieve the same effect.

Polies is not the thing that impacts performance on maps in D3. It's polies that receive /cast specularlighting/shadows/normalmaps. All of which don't apply to the skydome.

In fact, I'm sure that one smoke emitter has twice more polies and performance impact than this skydome has. In comparison, the BFG has more tris than the skydome has.

just checked this out and one word:

wow

very strange, if I'm walking i get 55-60 fps with the occasional drop to 20, but if im standing still it's constant 18-23 fps.

most of it looks pretty good but not good enough for the performance hit, plus the water looks good in a screenshot but in game looks like plastic wrap in 5:00 traffic

djester wrote:

very strange, if I'm walking i get 55-60 fps with the occasional drop to 20, but if im standing still it's constant 18-23 fps.

most of it looks pretty good but not good enough for the performance hit, plus the water looks good in a screenshot but in game looks like plastic wrap in 5:00 traffic

Well, since it's not about the water but the skybox I wouldn't worry about that. :wink:

I don't have *any* performance drop at all with this sky. If you do experience one then it's because of the water and not the sky. The skydome mesh has 1008 tri's, these tris do not cast shadows, do not receive any light whatsoever nor do they receive specularity.

Compare that to the soulcube which has 1574 tris and I know that a performance drop due to this skydome is extremely unlikely if not impossible, and certainly negligable.

The performance hit you're experiencing is due to the heathaze effect on the water.

I'll make a single map with a normal sky texure and then the same one with the dome to see what the performance does.

looks nice blood.

here's an idea after looking at the dome pics (i did not download it). what if you did a flat sky instead of a curved dome? a VERY wide and VERY long single poly flat sky? make it so wide that it seems to stretch to the horizon (or just far enough depending on what the player can actually see). and then have the cloud textures scroll across that? that way the clouds would get smaller as they move across the sky.

just an idea...

djester, you're probably testing this with the editor open... that's why you have the bad performance when you stand still. Never test anything map's performance while in the editor.

G

This is truly funny. The skydome performs 10-12 fps *better* than the regular texGen sky textures!

Remember, a texGen sky needs 6 textures of atleast 512x512 to work. The skydome only needs 3 plus a sky texgen needs extra calculations all the time to account for p.o.v. That's most likely the reason for so much of a performance gain in favor of the skydome.

Screens / Skydome:
80 fps

78 fps

Screens / regular texgen:
67 fps

65 fps

67 fps

I guess it all comes down to the implementation as was already said by someone earlier.

If you had a map wrapped in a sky of this style then it'd be very wasteful resources, but for an open area like D3CDIT and other city-style areas its a great way to increase performance that extra bit

Anyway, its a really nice effect and if its less of a hit on the performance front all I can say again is "wow" and well done

Did they use that in the doom3 can do it too project that they released the other day ?

this is awesome bloodRayne, I was getting a bit depressed the other night after watching some quake 3 trick jumping video where one of the levels was basically floating in space with a beautiful sky above and the sea below. I thought to myself "dang! why hasn't anyone figured out how to do that in doom 3 yet". So now I am extremeyl excited to download your map and check it out when I get home.

I was curious if you knew what would happen if you wrapped the whole level in a hollow sphere instead of half a sphere - could you acheive a "level hanging in space" effect?

One thing, the water kinda moves too fast to look real...other than that, it's really good!

I've toyed with this a bit and put it into the current test-build. It looks really sweet, even on a model twice the size as what you had... and, like your tests indicate, there's actually a slight performance boost compared with the typical skybox. Of course, w/ the D3CDIT project, there's less of a benefit, but every little bit helps.

G

I can't wait to see it in the new test build, it's actually probably one of the nicest looking skies I've ever seen in a game.

dfloss wrote:

I was curious if you knew what would happen if you wrapped the whole level in a hollow sphere instead of half a sphere - could you acheive a "level hanging in space" effect?

I don't see why this shouldn't work. You can easilly do this with a sphere and a nice 'space' texture.

goliathvt wrote:

I've toyed with this a bit and put it into the current test-build. It looks really sweet, even on a model twice the size as what you had... and, like your tests indicate, there's actually a slight performance boost compared with the typical skybox. Of course, w/ the D3CDIT project, there's less of a benefit, but every little bit helps.

G

Sweet. Can't wait to see it inside the project, allways glad to help! :wink:

This map isn't working. Followed the directions, but no good.

Extracted it to the doom 3 directory, then tried leaving it as the plain pk4 file. Then tried base, and a seperate folder in base. No matter what, map sky_box in the console doesn't load up the map.

Sizer wrote:

This map isn't working. Followed the directions, but no good.

Extracted it to the doom 3 directory, then tried leaving it as the plain pk4 file. Then tried base, and a seperate folder in base. No matter what, map sky_box in the console doesn't load up the map.

Install it as normal into the doom3\skybox folder so the pk4 file is in there. Then start up doom3, go to the mod menu and select the 'skybox' mod from the menu. After selecting and starting that mod, run the map by typing 'map sky_box' into the console. That should do it.

You need to extract the archive into your D3 directory, keeping path-names... so it'll create a subdir in C:\doom3\ called "skybox". Then, you load "skybox" up as a mod... and then it'll work.

Edit: Oops.. BR beat me to it.

G

Worked great for me.
Unzipped into d:\doom3
fire up doom3
hit mod button
pick skybox
then bring down console and map sky_box

FPS stays at 60 as I walk round ( or should that be paddle

)

I just threw the pk4 into base and loaded the map. Ran very nicely, locked at 60 although appeared a little over-bright or washed out. :?:

Either way, seems like an awesome technique. Good work.

breakerfall wrote:

I just threw the pk4 into base and loaded the map. Ran very nicely, locked at 60 although appeared a little over-bright or washed out. :?:

Either way, seems like an awesome technique. Good work.

Gamma/brightness really is one of the most system dependant problems there is. What looks crisp and sharp on one system can look bland and washed out on another. There's really no fix for it other than letting people manually adjust their gamma/brightness settings according to an image to make sure they are getting the experience that the developer wanted them to have.

I can give an example, a screen like this should be used by every game/mod. I know we'll certainly put one into the Hexen TC.

Heh, I tried lowering my brightness too... just seemed that it was too bright. I use a TFT though, maybe it's that? By the way, my brightness seems about right according to the posted image (I know it was just an example).

[edit]
Hmm, also depends on the angle I'm looking at it from heh.

breakerfall wrote:

Heh, I tried lowering my brightness too... just seemed that it was too bright. I use a TFT though, maybe it's that? By the way, my brightness seems about right according to the posted image (I know it was just an example).

[edit]
Hmm, also depends on the angle I'm looking at it from heh.

Lol.. some people swear by TFT but I wouldn't trade my Sony Trinitron for the world.

Sizer wrote:

This map isn't working. Followed the directions, but no good.

Extracted it to the doom 3 directory, then tried leaving it as the plain pk4 file. Then tried base, and a seperate folder in base. No matter what, map sky_box in the console doesn't load up the map.

If you extracted it using the path information in the zip, it will have created a directory under Doom3 called skybox. This needs to be selected from the mod menu in-game. Then you type in map sky_box. Works fine.

EDIT: lol - you have to be quick around here. I don't think Sizer will be left in any doubt as to what to do

BloodRayne. - that looks bloody fantastic. I'm guessing this will become the default technique for outside maps from now on

I also had brightness issues and turned it down in-game until it looked right. Steady 60FPS too. When you walk to the edge it will make you feel a bit sea-sick though....

Implemented it into one of the Hexen maps now as well. With some tweaking, almost any effect can be gotten. From lucious space backdrops from hubble pictures to rainy and cloudy skies such as these.

Those shots are gorgeous man... I'm as excited about your mod as I am the D3CDIT mod... which, given the hours I'm willing to throw at it, says a lot.

Actually, I look forward to a few key D3 mods more than I do new game releases... and yours is one of them.

Wewt, it works. Thanks for the help.

This looks really nice btw. Both the water and the skybox. 1600x1200 HQ at a constant 60 FPS. From what I've read I imagine you could scale this up even further and still not deck performance?

goliathvt wrote:

Those shots are gorgeous man... I'm as excited about your mod as I am the D3CDIT mod... which, given the hours I'm willing to throw at it, says a lot.

Actually, I look forward to a few key D3 mods more than I do new game releases... and yours is one of them.

Thanks, I'm looking forward to D3CDIT as well! Too bad you're not a member of the EOC team.

Just to show another use of this sky method off here's two more screenies where the rain comes out nicely:

I must have missed this thread. This looks really nice. Good work BloodRayne.

Looking great.

The water didn't look too bad. I actually liked it. But, I agree it could probably be better with a little tweaking.

How difficult is it to have a larger dome? And what are the performance implications of a larger dome?

I'm using a dome that is 2x as large as the one BloodRayne has made available in his testmap for the D3CDIT project. The performance differences are negligible/non-existant between the two, as far as I can tell. I'm using the same-sized textures, so the only diff is the size of the mesh.

G

I think pbmax brought it up but I do see an issue with the clouds not deforming based on perspective like you can do now with normal skies. This probably wouldn't be as much of an issue if all the areas close to the horizon were blocked off by buildings or something...

EDIT: Btw, me and another guy are currently working on a proper fresnel effected water shader for people to use. It should be released soon

thats brilliant, I ran for ages right up to the side it remided me of the truman show

maybe if you squashed down the sphere on the z-axis and cut it further up from center it might give the perspective a bit more distance, but how it is now looks great

mikebart wrote:

thats brilliant, I ran for ages right up to the side it remided me of the truman show

maybe if you squashed down the sphere on the z-axis and cut it further up from center it might give the perspective a bit more distance, but how it is now looks great

Absolutely. There's many ways to optimize this. I am planning to expand on this a lot. Like having a sun in there, which works via a deform sprite/add/blend mode. And I want to add extra planets in the skyline that slowly float and revolve around each other, perhaps a milkyway, behind the clouds and all dynamic. The more I test with this method, the more I believe that anything is possible at any resolution...

Skies like this should be absolutely possible:
http://www.plainsfolk.com/seminar/weblo ... %20Sky.jpg

Our swampmap is already looking close to this:

mikebart wrote:

maybe if you squashed down the sphere on the z-axis and cut it further up from center it might give the perspective a bit more distance, but how it is now looks great

Yeah, I agree with mikebart, for a quick fix to the perspective of the clouds at the horizon issue (if you can get close enough, or be able to see the horizon, which I'm afraid you nearly can from the top of my block in the D3CDIT project), keep the dome hape but just pull the sides out and down, so you end up with a very wide dome, but no higher than it is at present.

I think this should work as, afterall, this is what clouds do in real life.

To Bloodrayne
If you can get all that working, this will probably be one of the most important tools for the D3 mod community created so far, as it enables kinds of maps before D3 had no hope of ever convincingly creating, i.e. outdoor maps, and not just outdoor maps that are in a tiny little ditch on Mars. You never know, you may get an email from Raven requesting they use it in Q4.

idiom wrote:

I think pbmax brought it up but I do see an issue with the clouds not deforming based on perspective like you can do now with normal skies.

thats the only thing i saw wrong with this method. since you are using a round dome, the cloud textures will not decrease in size as they moves toward the "horizon". i suggested using a HUGE single flat poly instead. someone else mentioned squishing the dome so the sides are further away like this shape 0 instead of this shape O.

however, a round dome would be best for planetary and celestial objects.

perhaps you could combine the two? what do you think???

pbmax wrote:

idiom wrote:

I think pbmax brought it up but I do see an issue with the clouds not deforming based on perspective like you can do now with normal skies.

thats the only thing i saw wrong with this method. since you are using a round dome, the cloud textures will not decrease in size as they moves toward the "horizon". i suggested using a HUGE single flat poly instead. someone else mentioned squishing the dome so the sides are further away like this shape 0 instead of this shape O.

however, a round dome would be best for planetary and celestial objects.

perhaps you could combine the two? what do you think???

Actually, the skydome is a tried way for making skies in 3dsMax, I am basically using the exact same method in D3 as I use in 3dsMax.

It's a good idea to adjust the dome so it strechtes outward a bit. This testmodel was jsut a quick setup to see if it would work, which it does. So now it's just a matter of tweaking the models further until we find an ideal setup.

I took a long hard look at the clouds in the sky today (in real life that is), and they really do look like they are in a 0 shape dome, they don't stretch for ever into the distance. I suppose it depends on the clouds, but the ones today were pretty typical, and match the ones currently used in the texture, and I honestly think a wide flat dome shape will yield the perfect results.

Bauul wrote:

I took a long hard look at the clouds in the sky today (in real life that is), and they really do look like they are in a 0 shape dome, they don't stretch for ever into the distance. I suppose it depends on the clouds, but the ones today were pretty typical, and match the ones currently used in the texture, and I honestly think a wide flat dome shape will yield the perfect results.

I think that remodelling is not the answer. I think that the answer is in the UV map for the texture itself. After adjusting the UV map a little bit you can achieve the exact same effect.

b.t.w. I just added a 'sun' which is a simple square with an additive texture in between the gradient and the cloud layers and the effect is really convincing. The clouds now dim the sun as they should.

This is very very nice.......realistic sky is a really underestimated feature of realism. It can change the whole perception of a map. I'm really looking forward to seeing what can be done on the D3CDIT map using this technique.

Great work chaps!

That has to be one of the best skies I've seen in a game. You've got my props, Bloodrayne...good job.

Renzatic wrote:

That has to be one of the best skies I've seen in a game. You've got my props, Bloodrayne...good job.

Thanks for the kudos, guys. It's really appreciated!

Now how do we make a lensflare to finish this off? :wink:

edit: I think we can make a lensflare by using a func_beam which is a model with 6 flat sprites with the deform sprite material bound on one point to the sun and on another point to the player... maybe.

lensflares are gay :[
honestly, have you ever looked at a hexen sky and thoaght "MAN THAT COULD SURE USE A FAGGY LENSFLARE! THAT'LL MAKE THE MOOD JUST PERFECT!"
don't ruin the great sky you got going already.

Yeah, I suppose any uneducated, dimwitted, moron with less than half a brain would think lensflares are "faggy". This is the perfect example of why all forums across the net need some kind of plugin to detect stupid people and restrict them from accessing the forums.

Maybe I'll request they create one at phpBB.

no offense _placid_ but lol @ breakerfall . Thank you so much i havent laughed so hard all day.

hmm great great plugin idea :lol:

There are actually two ways of doing lens flare I've seen in a game which look good, one is the traditional one (Serious Sam had the best in my opinion), where the light from the sun is split by the various lenses in a video/still camera causing the multiple coloured disks. Whilst most people like lense flare, it is kind of odd in a game because it means you must be looking through a camera of some sort into the game world. Most people don't realise this when playing, they just think it looks nice, but if you actually think about it, it kind of ruins the illusion of actually being there.

The other kind which I think probably creates a more realistic look, especially if you were actually there, is the method they used on Medal of Honor: Allied Assult (it may have been on others, I just haven't seen it), where looking at the sun simply creates a large bright blur on the screen, beyond the contours of the sun itself. It sounds crap on paper (well, forum), but if you imagine in real life, if you let the sun creep into the edge of your vision, half your site goes all white and you have to squint. They played it down for MOH, else you'd always have a big white glare on the screen, so that only when you stared more or less directly at the sun you got the glare.

I can't decide which would be best to use, both are completely exceptable in games and no-one would complain about either. So, I suppose it's down to personal choice, or ease of implimentation.

Something tells me the lense flare would be harder to get working, but easier to get looking good, where as the flare would be easy to get working, but harder to make look convincing.

Quote:

The other kind which I think probably creates a more realistic look, especially if you were actually there, is the method they used on Medal of Honor: Allied Assult (it may have been on others, I just haven't seen it), where looking at the sun simply creates a large bright blur on the screen, beyond the contours of the sun itself. It sounds crap on paper (well, forum), but if you imagine in real life, if you let the sun creep into the edge of your vision, half your site goes all white and you have to squint. They played it down for MOH, else you'd always have a big white glare on the screen, so that only when you stared more or less directly at the sun you got the glare.

I think this effect would be stunning compared to a traditional lens flare. I must admit I've always wondered why games rendered lens flares - it's "first person" not "first person through a camera" isn't it?

Bauul wrote:

I took a long hard look at the clouds in the sky today (in real life that is), and they really do look like they are in a 0 shape dome, they don't stretch for ever into the distance. I suppose it depends on the clouds, but the ones today were pretty typical, and match the ones currently used in the texture, and I honestly think a wide flat dome shape will yield the perfect results.

but the O shaped dome is ideal for a closed in stormy, fogy sky like the one on the hexen swamp map, I would imagine a 0 shaped sky would look better for a sky where you really have to portray great distance

All you need to do is squish the UV map for the dome. No need to alter the shape.

docbloke wrote:

I think this effect would be stunning compared to a traditional lens flare. I must admit I've always wondered why games rendered lens flares - it's "first person" not "first person through a camera" isn't it?

A lens is the most obvious source of refraction but even simple glass, fog or temperature differences are also sources of refraction of various degrees. When you're driving at night the windshield of your car can create halos on streetlamps. If the DOOM guy still had his helmet (grrrr) flares would be quite appropriate. They're certainly appropriate on the fog-ladden landscapes of the Hexen mythos.

Speaking of which, BloodRayne, as a fan of the original Hexen I must say you and your team have really nailed the atmosphere of the setting. Your TC has been at the top of my (short) list of mods I'm very much looking forward to. This last breakthrough is just one of many that I personally appreciate very, very much. Keep up the most excellent work.

As for the sun flare can you use deform flare somehow?

Quote:

A lens is the most obvious source of refraction but even simple glass, fog or temperature differences are also sources of refraction of various degrees. When you're driving at night the windshield of your car can create halos on streetlamps. If the DOOM guy still had his helmet (grrrr) flares would be quite appropriate. They're certainly appropriate on the fog-ladden landscapes of the Hexen mythos.

Absolutely, I just think something subtle based on the realistic reasoning you suggest (and Bauul suggested) goes far further than the 'over the top' multi glass refraction that makes it look like you are viewing through a 600mm zoom lens.

that sky and enviroment looks really really really really good. hl2 fanboys should see that and try saying again "doom3 can't do nice outdoors"

Excuse my stupidity (make that plugin :lol:

) rich_is_board but what is the uv map. Ultra Violet map I guess, but what does it do exactly.

johnokaner wrote:

Excuse my stupidity (make that plugin :lol:

) rich_is_board but what is the uv map. Ultra Violet map I guess, but what does it do exactly.

The UV map is the way that a texture map is wrapped around a model. Basically it tells the shader how to map the texture onto the model.

FarCry has the best "direct sunlight view" effect when using high dynamic range rendering (HDR) on latest Geforce models, imho.

If you look at the sun, the whole screen is white for a second until your (virtual) iris adjusts to the brightness and you start to see your surroundings again while the sun itself stays as a big glowing ball on the sky.

Maybe this very lifelike behaviour could be imitated in the Doom 3 engine without using HDR (as it is not supported at the moment, afaik).

Burrito wrote:

FarCry has the best "direct sunlight view" effect when using high dynamic range rendering (HDR) on latest Geforce models, imho.

If you look at the sun, the whole screen is white for a second until your (virtual) iris adjusts to the brightness and you start to see your surroundings again while the sun itself stays as a big glowing ball on the sky.

Maybe this very lifelike behaviour could be imitated in the Doom 3 engine without using HDR (as it is not supported at the moment, afaik).

HDR is actually only supported on a small amount of machines in Far Cry. Most medium end machines can't run it, and as far as I remember only a certain set of videocards can support it.

In any case it's hard to compare the D3 engine to the Far Cry engine since they both were designed for different things. Far Cry can by far create much more exotic and huge outdoor scenes than D3 can, but D3 is much better when it comes to indoor scenes. It all depends on what you want to get. But now I'm going offtopic.

I think a fake HDR effect can be put into this method of making skies using a simple script, shaderparms and a well placed shader. I may or may not look into that as it's not a big priority, allthough I'm sure others will pick up on this method and might try to implement it for themselves. :wink:

imo, using the method found in games such as medal of honor (quake based game too i think) is pretty good. the closer you look towards the sun, the more washed out the screen becomes. its simple but effective...

pbmax wrote:

imo, using the method found in games such as medal of honor (quake based game too i think) is pretty good. the closer you look towards the sun, the more washed out the screen becomes. its simple but effective...

yup, quake 3, with a HUD so similar to COD one does begin to raise an eyebrow.

pbmax wrote:

imo, using the method found in games such as medal of honor (quake based game too i think) is pretty good. the closer you look towards the sun, the more washed out the screen becomes. its simple but effective...

you should take a look at Quake2maX
the coder uses that effect pretty good in his latest release

(for testers: download dday normandy, apply Q2maX, and load the map dday2
if you then look at the moon you will get that effect)

edit: or look at this
http://users.pandora.be/q2_infy/images/ ... -14-10.avi

!nFy wrote:

pbmax wrote:

imo, using the method found in games such as medal of honor (quake based game too i think) is pretty good. the closer you look towards the sun, the more washed out the screen becomes. its simple but effective...

you should take a look at Quake2maX
the coder uses that effect pretty good in his latest release

(for testers: download dday normandy, apply Q2maX, and load the map dday2
if you then look at the moon you will get that effect)

edit: or look at this
http://users.pandora.be/q2_infy/images/ ... -14-10.avi

A similar effect could be done made with a shader and some scripting, I don't think the SDK would even be needed for that. I'ld like to look into it when I get some time.

Bloodrayne.

I was thinking about implenting this into my WIP map called "sky fortress", I thought it would be perfect for it (better frames, and looks much more natural)

http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewto ... 5519#85519

and is it possible to customize the color of the sky, and clouds? I wanted to give it more of an orangish look

Sanius wrote:

and is it possible to customize the color of the sky, and clouds? I wanted to give it more of an orangish look

Its entirely possible.

c--b wrote:

Sanius wrote:

and is it possible to customize the color of the sky, and clouds? I wanted to give it more of an orangish look

Its entirely possible.

Sweet jesus!

What's this!? More images and a download link please!

Sorry just a test map for a mod I've been planning for a few years

Im just trying to get the visual style down so I can gather some members. A game set in 17th century japan wont be easy.

Dude,

that skybox is awesome! :shock:

I love outdoor levels, this one looks very promising

@c--b: What are you aiming for in terms of history? I mean, is it going to be about the persecution of Christianity, concidering it's taking place early in the Edo period.
My knowledge about japanese history is fairly limited, but I believe the persecution started in 1615 and continued until the middle of the 19th century when relations with western countries where restored, so that would be a good theme for your mod. Of course, one needen't always be on the good side, playing as the shogunate could be fun too.

A first-person samurai-mod in Doom 3 seems very hard to make, and sword fighting would be hard to integrate I think.

Maybe a third-person view would help, hehe... I keep picturing the Doom guy with a japanese sword running around in japan. :lol:

"The Legendary Manslayer, DoomGuy" :shock:

couldn't you just replace the flashlight model with a sword model....

wha la.... SAMURAI MOD!!!!

c--b: how did you customize the color of the sky, and insert it into your map? I would really like to know this.

Spectro wrote:

@c--b: What are you aiming for in terms of history? I mean, is it going to be about the persecution of Christianity, concidering it's taking place early in the Edo period.
My knowledge about japanese history is fairly limited, but I believe the persecution started in 1615 and continued until the middle of the 19th century when relations with western countries where restored, so that would be a good theme for your mod. Of course, one needen't always be on the good side, playing as the shogunate could be fun too.

To tell you the truth I just chose a time thats been pheasable to explain the reason for you being a ninja (I plan on a Ninja Action Realism mod actually). So I chose a time of great turmoil.

The year isnt all that important though since I've narrowed my sights to merely multiplayer and not a story mode (Since Single player requires alot of maps/textures, and I dont know anyone else who does Japanese maps). So I may just end up creating the media myself (Maps, textures, etc) and waiting for Quake 4 since its focussed towards just that (or creating all the media for Doom 3 from now till Quake 4 comes out, and then porting it over) but that all depends on if people are interested enough. I may very well end up going for a Doom 3 version, if the intrest and talent is there for a full on TC.

Spectro wrote:

A first-person samurai-mod in Doom 3 seems very hard to make, and sword fighting would be hard to integrate I think.

Its funny that you say that, Thats exactly what I had planned. I've been pondering the means to do it for quite some time out loud with the fellows from the IGDA forums. Do a search if you want to read that, Im not totally prepared to be under public scrutiny

dfloss wrote:

couldn't you just replace the flashlight model with a sword model....

wha la.... SAMURAI MOD!!!!

I could...But then I would have to commit hara-kiri.

Sanius wrote:

c--b: how did you customize the color of the sky, and insert it into your map? I would really like to know this.

Actually I think BloodRayne explained it somewhere on these boards (Or possibly even in the first post of this topic), but I'll do it again.

There are some textures supplied with BloodRayne's skydome (Two cloud textures and one sky color texture, and some other ones that arent used I think), you can just recolor those in a paint program. Or you can do what I did and create some completely new ones. Or infact you could fool around with the RBG values in the material file (I havent done this though).

Anyway, thanks to BloodRayne for solving all my skybox problems. Skyboxes are a pain in the ass (Infact thats the sole reason I didnt show any screens for so long).

c--b

there are 3 cloud textures and 1 plain texture in this pk4, and his first post doesn't tell me how to put it into my own map

Ahh, I see. What I did to get it into my map was select the dome then copy the skydome into my map file.

c--b wrote:

Ahh, I see. What I did to get it into my map was select the dome then copy the skydome into my map file.

umm, I loaded the skybox map in the editor and it's just a spawnpoint and everything is gray with a few entities in the 2d view, and I go into render mode and it's pitch black. and I don't know where I can find the skydome, and I dont know how to c&p it into my map

Do you have Cubic clipping on?

Unzip the PK4 file using winzip then examine the files. The .ase file was an exported mapmodel via 3dsmax. (you can add it to your map using the rightclick>new model command in D3edit, it's just a basic mapmodel (and a testmodel at that). This thread was just a 'proof of concept' for finding out if this method was possible in D3.

You can use the mapfile I made as a template as well, just unzip the pk4 and you'll find out which files you can edit easilly enough. :wink:

I really hate to thread-jack, but if you are doing a swordfighting game, you can actually go all-out with doom 3 since the ragdoll and animation stuff is in the game code. You can use the animation for the feet and control the arm bones completely in the code. My suggestion would be to make it third person and when you click and drag the mouse it moves the sword around in the same motion.

On Topic:
Since it's coming out in a couple days (and some people already have it) I suppose I can tell you the expansion pack has portal skies (which are now implemented in the engine and will be available to mods).

bloodrayne, problem is, I don't know how to add the model in the editor..

sorry for double post

Method showed me how to get the model in my map, but the problem is there is no sky texture to it. someone want to help me with this?

*twiddles with photoshop and tries to change the color*

hey blood, you know there is a "skydome" in d3: RoE?

i'll post a few pics...

pbmax wrote:

hey blood, you know there is a "skydome" in d3: RoE?

i'll post a few pics...

I noticed one, yes. I also noticed the new skyportals which I'm trying to get to work a.t.m. for me. But I haven't had any luck yet.

here's a few RoE "skydome" pics...

little dome with scroling cloud texture off to the side of the main map:

somehow they projected the little dome over this whole scene:

That's exciting stuff. Gonna be working on those for EOC. I managed to implement a skyportal, it's pretty easy to make. Lightning effects and such should be easy to implement as well. Hope that raises the FPS a little as well.

some interesting outdoor terrain resources (including skydomes):

http://www.vterrain.org/Atmosphere/index.html
http://www.vterrain.org/Atmosphere/Clouds/index.html
http://www.vterrain.org/Atmosphere/rain.html
http://www.vterrain.org/index.html

Update: PCGamemods was screwy so I have added a new link: http://doom3.filefront.com/file/High_Qu ... dome;38046

This may be of interest to you guys since it pretty comes close to far-cry quality of water/skies. What it basically is, is a sky-dome with 2 layers of moving cloudtextures and a single covering dome with a gradient. This way you can create any type clouds and colors which you want to have and the results were astonishing. Yes there are some slight issues:

- How to optimize this ?
- There is a slight white line at the horizon but this is due to the fact that I wasn't to precise when making this. This was just a test. In a production environment I'ld stick the layers so close to each other that these artefacts will not show up. Now they are kind of apart.
- If you walk totally up to the edge of the dome you can see that it's not a generated skytexture but actually just moving layers of flat textures. But because the dome is so big, that shouldn't happen at all. And poses no problem.

This can be tweaked *lots* more.

I will leave the tweaking up to you guys.

You should make an extra layer at the horizon which will make it so the clouds seem to stretch into the horizon. You can add a planet / moon or sun to this easily. And you can change the entire look of this by adjusting the three textures that come with it for the clouds and the gradient. Red dusk skies or nighttime skies with stars are easily possible. You can add as much cloud layers as you'ld like as well.

You should see this in action, it looks lovely as the layers of clouds drift past eachother. :wink:

I will be releasing this by the end of this day and if you guys want to use it, be my guest!

*updated*
I just uploaded an updated version which looks better, you should check it out as it's more representative of what's possible:
http://doom3.filefront.com/file/High_Qu ... dome;38046

^^^^^This is a new link as of 10/20/2006

Extract into your doom3 directory (not your base directory).
And type 'map sky_box' that should put you into this map.

Wire:

If we can get it nice and optimised, hell yes, it'd add a lovely summers day feel to Doom which certainly never existed in the first one.

Lucky for us, you can't get to the edge of the map, so you'd never get close enough to use it.

The only thing I can think of though, is how would it work with the sun script?

Would it be possible to place the sun entity below the sky, but above the clouds? Then we could just use a scrolling clouds shader to fake the shadows (Q3 used one for its Terrain maps if you're wondering what I mean), as realistic cloud shadows (soft shadows with soft lighting) would be extremely hard to get working right in D3. If we got the clouds shader big enough, and worked it out so it was in line with the scrolling clouds, we could have a cool 'sun going in' effect as it moves behind the clouds. Coupled with a custom sun flare effect, this could look great.

Lol, I think I'm maybe a bit ahead of myself now though.

I'm impressed. I've been toying around with a few ideas for making convincing skies and this looks to be a good contender.

One question though, how big of a performance hit is it?

Bauul wrote:

If we can get it nice and optimised, hell yes, it'd add a lovely summers day feel to Doom which certainly never existed in the first one.

I don't think optimisation is any much more of an issue as it is now for the D3CDIT project.

Quote:

Lucky for us, you can't get to the edge of the map, so you'd never get close enough to use it.

The only thing I can think of though, is how would it work with the sun script?

Would it be possible to place the sun entity below the sky, but above the clouds?

I don't see why not. As it is now there is more than enough space inside the model to stick it in. But any modeller can recreate this as soon as they see how it's done to further tweak so the sun can go in and hide behind the clouds.

Quote:

Then we could just use a scrolling clouds shader to fake the shadows (Q3 used one for its Terrain maps if you're wondering what I mean), as realistic cloud shadows (soft shadows with soft lighting) would be extremely hard to get working right in D3. If we got the clouds shader big enough, and worked it out so it was in line with the scrolling clouds, we could have a cool 'sun going in' effect as it moves behind the clouds. Coupled with a custom sun flare effect, this could look great.

Lol, I think I'm maybe a bit ahead of myself now though.

Sun flare is one thing I've been wanting to make for the D3 engine for months now. But I don't know where to start. Let me think more on this.

Renzatic wrote:

I'm impressed. I've been toying around with a few ideas for making convincing skies and this looks to be a good contender.

One question though, how big is the hit to performance?

Almost nill. This is a *big* map and it's running fine 30+ fps on my slow molasses machine. The fps counts you see in the screens are because I still had 3dsmax and the editor open in the background. :wink:

Quote:

Almost nill. This is a *big* map and it's running fine 30+ fps on my slow molasses machine. The fps counts you see in the screens are because I still had 3dsmax and the editor open in the background.

Cool to know.

Even though having the editor and Max running in the background is a big ass resource hog, I'm still worried about how it'll impact performance in a 5000 brush map with all the bells and whistles.

That sphere is alot of extra polys being drawn, there has to be a cleaner way to implement it and still achieve the same effect.

Renzatic wrote:

Quote:

Almost nill. This is a *big* map and it's running fine 30+ fps on my slow molasses machine. The fps counts you see in the screens are because I still had 3dsmax and the editor open in the background.

Cool to know.

Even though having the editor and Max running in the background is a big ass resource hog, I'm still worried about how it'll impact performance in a 5000 brush map with all the bells and whistles.

That sphere is alot of extra polys being drawn, there has to be a cleaner way to implement it and still achieve the same effect.

Polies is not the thing that impacts performance on maps in D3. It's polies that receive /cast specularlighting/shadows/normalmaps. All of which don't apply to the skydome.

In fact, I'm sure that one smoke emitter has twice more polies and performance impact than this skydome has. In comparison, the BFG has more tris than the skydome has.

just checked this out and one word:

wow

very strange, if I'm walking i get 55-60 fps with the occasional drop to 20, but if im standing still it's constant 18-23 fps.

most of it looks pretty good but not good enough for the performance hit, plus the water looks good in a screenshot but in game looks like plastic wrap in 5:00 traffic

djester wrote:

very strange, if I'm walking i get 55-60 fps with the occasional drop to 20, but if im standing still it's constant 18-23 fps.

most of it looks pretty good but not good enough for the performance hit, plus the water looks good in a screenshot but in game looks like plastic wrap in 5:00 traffic

Well, since it's not about the water but the skybox I wouldn't worry about that. :wink:

I don't have *any* performance drop at all with this sky. If you do experience one then it's because of the water and not the sky. The skydome mesh has 1008 tri's, these tris do not cast shadows, do not receive any light whatsoever nor do they receive specularity.

Compare that to the soulcube which has 1574 tris and I know that a performance drop due to this skydome is extremely unlikely if not impossible, and certainly negligable.

The performance hit you're experiencing is due to the heathaze effect on the water.

I'll make a single map with a normal sky texure and then the same one with the dome to see what the performance does.

looks nice blood.

here's an idea after looking at the dome pics (i did not download it). what if you did a flat sky instead of a curved dome? a VERY wide and VERY long single poly flat sky? make it so wide that it seems to stretch to the horizon (or just far enough depending on what the player can actually see). and then have the cloud textures scroll across that? that way the clouds would get smaller as they move across the sky.

just an idea...

djester, you're probably testing this with the editor open... that's why you have the bad performance when you stand still. Never test anything map's performance while in the editor.

G

This is truly funny. The skydome performs 10-12 fps *better* than the regular texGen sky textures!

Remember, a texGen sky needs 6 textures of atleast 512x512 to work. The skydome only needs 3 plus a sky texgen needs extra calculations all the time to account for p.o.v. That's most likely the reason for so much of a performance gain in favor of the skydome.

Screens / Skydome:
80 fps

78 fps

Screens / regular texgen:
67 fps

65 fps

67 fps

I guess it all comes down to the implementation as was already said by someone earlier.

If you had a map wrapped in a sky of this style then it'd be very wasteful resources, but for an open area like D3CDIT and other city-style areas its a great way to increase performance that extra bit

Anyway, its a really nice effect and if its less of a hit on the performance front all I can say again is "wow" and well done

Did they use that in the doom3 can do it too project that they released the other day ?

this is awesome bloodRayne, I was getting a bit depressed the other night after watching some quake 3 trick jumping video where one of the levels was basically floating in space with a beautiful sky above and the sea below. I thought to myself "dang! why hasn't anyone figured out how to do that in doom 3 yet". So now I am extremeyl excited to download your map and check it out when I get home.

I was curious if you knew what would happen if you wrapped the whole level in a hollow sphere instead of half a sphere - could you acheive a "level hanging in space" effect?

One thing, the water kinda moves too fast to look real...other than that, it's really good!

I've toyed with this a bit and put it into the current test-build. It looks really sweet, even on a model twice the size as what you had... and, like your tests indicate, there's actually a slight performance boost compared with the typical skybox. Of course, w/ the D3CDIT project, there's less of a benefit, but every little bit helps.

G

I can't wait to see it in the new test build, it's actually probably one of the nicest looking skies I've ever seen in a game.

dfloss wrote:

I was curious if you knew what would happen if you wrapped the whole level in a hollow sphere instead of half a sphere - could you acheive a "level hanging in space" effect?

I don't see why this shouldn't work. You can easilly do this with a sphere and a nice 'space' texture.

goliathvt wrote:

I've toyed with this a bit and put it into the current test-build. It looks really sweet, even on a model twice the size as what you had... and, like your tests indicate, there's actually a slight performance boost compared with the typical skybox. Of course, w/ the D3CDIT project, there's less of a benefit, but every little bit helps.

G

Sweet. Can't wait to see it inside the project, allways glad to help! :wink:

This map isn't working. Followed the directions, but no good.

Extracted it to the doom 3 directory, then tried leaving it as the plain pk4 file. Then tried base, and a seperate folder in base. No matter what, map sky_box in the console doesn't load up the map.

Sizer wrote:

This map isn't working. Followed the directions, but no good.

Extracted it to the doom 3 directory, then tried leaving it as the plain pk4 file. Then tried base, and a seperate folder in base. No matter what, map sky_box in the console doesn't load up the map.

Install it as normal into the doom3\skybox folder so the pk4 file is in there. Then start up doom3, go to the mod menu and select the 'skybox' mod from the menu. After selecting and starting that mod, run the map by typing 'map sky_box' into the console. That should do it.

You need to extract the archive into your D3 directory, keeping path-names... so it'll create a subdir in C:\doom3\ called "skybox". Then, you load "skybox" up as a mod... and then it'll work.

Edit: Oops.. BR beat me to it.

G

Worked great for me.
Unzipped into d:\doom3
fire up doom3
hit mod button
pick skybox
then bring down console and map sky_box

FPS stays at 60 as I walk round ( or should that be paddle

)

I just threw the pk4 into base and loaded the map. Ran very nicely, locked at 60 although appeared a little over-bright or washed out. :?:

Either way, seems like an awesome technique. Good work.

breakerfall wrote:

I just threw the pk4 into base and loaded the map. Ran very nicely, locked at 60 although appeared a little over-bright or washed out. :?: