Im in a bind. tutorials or help please?

[Charles]

hey fellas, im in a bind.

A few years ago I was helping a buddy out who needed an artist to paint space scenes for a sky sphere.

I am involved in another project now doing much the same thing (yep, another space game) and I can not remember how to warp the image at the top and the bottom (you know when it gets compressed together) and I cant find the tutorial I learned it from either and ive been looking for a week.

I’m using photoshop by the way. Any help would be appreciated.

‘nother question. Is a skysphere is the BEST way to go for a space based game?

My buddy, the programmer, says we can use a sky box just as easily but for a sky sphere all I’d have to do is make the left and the right most edges blend seamlessly. That’s a crap load easier and allows me to paint a scene on one single canvas instead of 6 different ones which makes life easier for me and will allow me to concentrate on the art and just the art.

thanks in advance.

[alphageek]

I can't imagine how terrible it must be to line up pixels by hand.

A different approach would be to create your 2D space scapes by hand and then put them onto a rectangle in a 3D modelling program. Then create the 6 skybox images by rendering with a fov 90 degrees, aspect ratio 1:1 camera. Rotate the camera through the 6 directions to get the 6 sides of the skybox.

I have an article that explains how to do this in Blender here:
http://ten-ninjas.com/?q=article_skybox

[Charles]

well, yeah. Ok, alphageek I have a question though.
That seems easiest but what comes first? The chicken or the egg?

Wouldn’t the skybox already have to be completed and be applied to the 6 interior sides of the cube before I could take pictures of the 6 interior sides of the cube so I could have the images for a skybox?…lol see what I mean?
Im not a modeler and never delved into any 3d apps before so forgive my ignorance

[Rixeh]

Hey bro, I think there are photoshop plugins that will skew the top & bottom of a texture so it will map nicely over a sphere...

[Charles]

Yeah? i didn’t find a plugin for it but i did find a little walkthrough on how to do it in photoshop. unfortunately it would unnaturally squish both polar regions of the sphere and it would look kinda terrible..hehe

so i think sky boxes would be the way to go so ill just wait to see what alphageek says about my question.

on the other hand, i could do it in teragen but i don’t think you can get rid of the ground in teragen. il. have to play with it tonight.

[Tyn]

The advantage of doing things the way alphageek suggests is that you can create a 3d scene that will be rendered to the 2d format you need. You can use all kinds of effects and models to represent things, say you include a Sun model or a planet model or something. You can combine simple textures you find into a 3d scene with the proper lighting. If you are creative, you can create a good space scene without too much hassle in your modeller and render it to a really nice looking skybox.

[alphageek]

[quote="Charles"]
Wouldn’t the skybox already have to be completed and be applied to the 6 interior sides of the cube before I could take pictures of the 6 interior sides of the cube so I could have the images for a skybox?/quote]

The idea is that you create a bunch of 2D nebulas and gassy bits and so on. Then you place these in a 3D scene where you want them to be relative to the game world origin. Perhaps you would also add stars and maybe some kind of fogging -- whatever you want. Then once you have your 3D scene setup, you render the 6 skybox faces from within the scene.

You still get to draw nebulas etc. in 2D, but you get automatic skybox creation. Also, if you want to change the positions of things all you need to do is move nebulas, stars etc. around in your 3D scene and then re-render the skyboxes (rather than having to redraw everything from scratch in 2D).