Terragen
Tut
This
will show you how to render your own skybox graphics using
Terragen
OK,
this is how to make a skybox in Terragen.
[TERRAGEN: Get it here -> http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen
]
Load
up terragen and in the "LANDSCAPE" box click
GENERATE TERRAIN. A window appears allowing you to
customize your landscape.
Mess
around with slider settings (I always keep the METHOD
setting at SUBDIVIDE AND DISPLACE) and then press GENERATE
TERRAIN then CLOSE (or adjust the sliders and repeat until
you have the landscape you want).
Ok,
In the LANDSCAPE window the terrain should have appeared
(Blue=Water, White and Grey is Land - Note: The higher the
elevation the whiter it appears in the window). There is a
way to change the landscape manually. For example, in my
Eye-Sky where the sun is setting I carved that pit using
the Sculpting Tool (Medium sculpt is best).
When
sculpting LEFT MOUSE CLICK builds up the landscape and
RIGHT MOUSE CLICK lowers the terrain. When you are happy
click SAVE in the LANDSCAPE window to save a .terr file.
If
you don't want the terrain to be all one colour (or rather
various shades of that colour) - for example in the
Eye-Sky I had snow over rocky terrain (i.e. white on
brown) - then you will need to add various surface maps.
Just click ADD in the surface map section. Double LEFT
CLICK the SURFACE MAP to bring up this box ->
Click
colour to bring up this window to edit the colour of that
layer.
Choose
the colour and click OK then close the Surface Layer
window. Save the surface map.
To move one colour on top of another in the terrain e.g.
snow ON rocks, press the move keys.
*****************************************
Now
to check the landscape you have just built we will look
into the RENDERING CONTROL.
The
RENDER PREVIEW renders a quick view of the map in the
little window. The quality of the preview is set using the
DETAIL slider. Best to keep it in the middle unless you
have a very powerful computer or don't mind waiting a
couple of minutes. I'll come to the SETTINGS button in a
minute.
Next to the settings button are two tick boxes. This
toggles whether to render the sky and/or ground. This will
be useful if the nearbox shader in Q3A is ever fixed since
then we can render the sky separately from the ground and
stick moving clouds in between the two.
For
image size I used 512x512. Don't forget though that you
have to balance these skies with the total texture MB size
in your map (i.e. don't forget Paul said total textures
must not exceed 4MB including skies - using jpegs for
skies helps though).
I'll
come to the CAMERA area later. For now though we need to
set the environment to suit our vision for the map.
*****************************************
Look
at the toolbar on the left of Terragen.
Press
Water (if you have water in your map).
WATER
LEVEL raises and lowers the overall water level in your
landscape.
Choose the type of water for your landscape Deep, Muddy,
Tropic or Frozen for some preset water values. In the
WATER window you can change various things such as
reflectivity and wave properties.
When you're satisfied with the water values you have
(remember you can keep changing a value and pressing
RENDER PREVIEW to see the effect), close the WATER window.
*****************************************
Now
press CLOUDSCAPE in the toolbar.
This
area allows you to customize cloud cover.
The
cloud lighting settings affect how dark cloud cover makes
the scene. Generate clouds does exactly what it says
through this window ->
I
think Persistence affects how compact the clouds.
Move the LARGEST CLOUD SIZE slider right for huge clouds,
left for many small clouds.
Click GENERATE CLOUDS to see the results.
Click CLOSE when you're done.
Then close the CLOUDSCAPE window.
*****************************************
Now
press ATMOSPHERE in the toolbar.
To
make an evening setting move the LIGHT DECAY / RED's decay
slider to about 50%.
You can also increase fog for an excellent foggy landscape
(which will be seen in my next map 
) by moving the HAZE DENSITY slider to increase density.
When
you're done close the ATMOSPHERE window.
*****************************************
Finally,
press the LIGHTING CONDITIONS in the toolbar.
Move
the red lines around to set elevation and heading of the
sun in your landscape. When you lower the sun to an
evening elevation a message will appear (under the
Shaddows in Atmosphere checkbox) telling you how to deal
with evening renders.
For the Eye-Sky sun the only other setting I changed was
the CORONA SIZE in the SUN'S APPEARANCE tab.
This
increases the glow in the area where the sun is.
For evening skies you may also have to reduce shaddow
lightness in the BACKGROUND LIGHT tab to stop the washed
out appearance of the scene at evening times.
SAVE YOUR SUN SETTINGS.
When you're done close the LIGHTING CONDITIONS window.
*****************************************
YOU
ARE NOW READY TO RENDER
Go
to SETTINGS in the RENDERING CONTROL window.
The RENDER SETTINGS window appears.
Don't
touch gamma unless you specifically want to, but when you
are ready to do the final render slide the ATMOSPHERE and
CLOUD SHADING ACCURACY sliders to HIGH. Render times will
now drastically increase even in the little preview
window.
Click CLOSE.
MAKE SURE DETAIL (just under the preview window) is all
the way to the right (i.e. MAX).
Now
look at the CAMERA settings.
First place the camera and target where you want them by
LEFT clicking in the little topdown picture of your
terrain for CAMERA and RIGHT clicking for TARGET. The
target will be changed manually though in a moment for
skyboxes. Basically you want the camera near the middle so
left click in the middle of the little terrain window.
Now set the ZOOM /
MAGNIFICATION in CAMERA SETTINGS to 1. It defaults to
1.414 which will cause the images not to line up
correctly.
GO
TO WORLD FILE TO SAVE WORLD
Now,
for the skybox,
SET
PITCH = 0, HEAD = 0
PRESS RENDER IMAGE then save the image as QUAKE3/BASEQ3/ENV/YOURMAPNAME/yourmapnamesky_lf.jpg
SET PITCH = 0, HEAD = 90
PRESS RENDER IMAGE then save the image as QUAKE3/BASEQ3/ENV/YOURMAPNAME/yourmapnamesky_rt.jpg
SET PITCH = 0, HEAD = 180
PRESS RENDER IMAGE then save the image as QUAKE3/BASEQ3/ENV/YOURMAPNAME/yourmapnamesky_bk.jpg
SET PITCH = 0, HEAD = 270
PRESS RENDER IMAGE then save the image as QUAKE3/BASEQ3/ENV/YOURMAPNAME/yourmapnamesky_ft.jpg
SET PITCH = -90, HEAD = 270
PRESS RENDER IMAGE then save the image as QUAKE3/BASEQ3/ENV/YOURMAPNAME/yourmapnamesky_dn.jpg
SET PITCH = 90, HEAD = 270
PRESS RENDER IMAGE then save the image as QUAKE3/BASEQ3/ENV/YOURMAPNAME/yourmapnamesky_up.jpg
*****************************************
Now
in your .shader file add the lines
textures/yourmapname/yourmapname_skybox
{
qer_editorimage textures/yourmapname/yourmapnamesky1
//This line above is of a blue square texture I made to
apply the shader to map
NOTE: The color of this
texture affects the light color, most notable in shaded
parts of the map.//
surfaceparm noimpact
surfaceparm nolightmap
surfaceparm sky
q3map_sun .5 .37 .19 70 170 33
q3map_surfacelight 80
skyparms env/yourmapname/yourmapnamesky - -
}
Don't forget to take the corresponding sky angles from
Terragen to place in the q3map_sun parameter.
THAT'S
IT !
HOPE
THIS HELPS.
Still need more help read on
OK, some people have had
trouble getting custom skyboxes to work lately. Here's
the procedure I use after I have rendered the skybox
images.
Follow this procedure I
use to create a simple landscape replacing yourmapname
by the name of your map - note check your spelling on
all directory names and shader file lines. Where I use
c:\quake3\baseq3 you need to change this to point to
your baseq3 directory, e.g. d:\programfiles\quake3\baseq3
or whatever.
1) Render your landscape
or get them from an internet skybox site.
2) Make the following
directory:
c:\quake3\baseq3\env\yourmapname
3) Make sure your 6
skybox pictures are valid jpegs. Use normal compression
- nothing fancy.
Save these 6 images to
yourmapnamesky_up.jpg
yourmapnamesky_dn.jpg
yourmapnamesky_lf.jpg
yourmapnamesky_rt.jpg
yourmapnamesky_bk.jpg
yourmapnamesky_ft.jpg
NOTE:these 6 images
should be the ONLY files in your baseq3\env\yourmapname
directory.
NOTE ALSO: these names are for example lloydmdm1sky or
ob691sky, i.e. they have the word sky at the end of the
name of your map.
4) Place your blue
skybox1.tga qer image file (simple 64x64 blue square -
no alpha or anything) in your c:\quake3\baseq3\textures\yourmapname
directory. This is the image which should come up in
q3radiant in the texture menu for the yourmapname tex
directory. When you have finished all the following
steps you should have a blue square with the usual white
shader marking square around it in the radiant texture
window.
5)Now go to your
c:\quake3\baseq3\scripts directory.
Edit the SHADERLIST.TXT
to make sure you have a line in it which says
yourmapname.
Note: You do not want to put the env directory in this
only the yourmapname.
6) Save and exit the
SHADERLIST.TXT.
7) Open up the shader
called YOURMAPNAME.SHADER or create one if you don't
have one already.
8) Add this to the shader
file:
textures/yourmapname/yourmapname_skybox
{
qer_editorimage textures/yourmapname/skybox1.tga //note
this is the blue square
surfaceparm noimpact
surfaceparm nolightmap
surfaceparm sky
q3map_sun .5 .37 .19 155 170 78
q3map_surfacelight 130
skyparms env/yourmapname/yourmapnamesky
- -
}
MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ALL THE BRACKETS.
YOU WILL WANT TO CHANGE THE PROPERTIES TO SUIT YOUR MAP.
9) Save the .shader file
and load up q3radiant.
10) Build and hollow a
brush and place an info_playerstart or something.
11) Load up the texture
set for yourmapname.
12) There should be a
blue square with the white shader marker around it
called yourmapname_skybox. Apply this to the box - all
sides.
13) Compile the map.
This Tutorial was made by
Lloyd M and was posted in the Quake world forums.
If you have any questions
ask Lloyd M
Lloyd
M
One more Terragen tut
for ya here
