How to make skyboxes?

centipede · Post by **centipede** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 5:31 pm

I was asked by someone to make an artificial skybox. Could anybody say something about how to do that? Are there any tricks or any clever freeware tools to help doing that? Thanks.

dennis · Post by **dennis** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 8:48 pm

If you can create a scene with any 3D rendering packages it's quite easy.
Simply render 6 views from a single point in all axis aligned directions with a camera set on a 90 degree view angle.

http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... 3660#33660

Fredz · Post by **Fredz** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 11:59 pm

You can create nice skyboxes with Terragen, their sky rendering is pretty convincing. Just search for "terragen" and "skybox" in google and you should find some tutorials about how to do it.

Whitebear · Post by **Whitebear** » Mon Apr 25, 2005 4:39 am

Terragen is not free for commercial use.

RoundSparrow · Post by **RoundSparrow** » Tue Apr 26, 2005 9:20 am

http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/registerc.shtml

$99 USD per person.

spookyboo · Post by **spookyboo** » Tue Apr 26, 2005 11:02 am

I'm using Bryce for skyboxes. Just face the camera towards the 6 cube positions and generate the 6 images. There is a tutorial somewhere on the Internet that describes how to make a skybox using Bryce

Post by **jacmoe** » Tue Apr 26, 2005 5:43 pm

Bryce is much more expensive than terragen

luckless666 · Post by **luckless666** » Tue Apr 26, 2005 8:36 pm

jacmoe wrote:Bryce is much more expensive than terragen

Its a lot more versatile than terragen though, isn't it? though if skyboxes is all you want, then Terragen is the way to go

Post by **jacmoe** » Tue Apr 26, 2005 8:38 pm

Indeed

Lucky_Luciano · Post by **Lucky_Luciano** » Tue Apr 26, 2005 8:49 pm

Here is a very nice tutorial about Skyboxes in Terragen: http://users.pandora.be/Ariffnet/tutorials/skybox.htm

Jerky · Post by **Jerky** » Wed Apr 27, 2005 3:35 pm

jacmoe wrote:Bryce is much more expensive than terragen

How can $80 be more expensive than $100? Bryce is not that expensive, and for $80, you get a LOT out of it. DAZ productions bought it from Corel, and they sell it online for download now.

http://bryce.daz3d.com/

For anyone with $80, you can do a lot with this program. Its a 90mb download. DAZ also has all sorts of addons and such, but that is another story.

sphinkie · Post by **sphinkie** » Fri Apr 29, 2005 7:28 am

Terragen has a demo version that is free, fully functionnal, but limited in output image resolution.

IoN_PuLse · Post by **IoN_PuLse** » Sat Apr 30, 2005 5:39 am

You can also use Blender to create a scene, then stick a cube in the middle of it, set it up with the env parameter in it's blender material, render, and then it contains renders of all the views you can then split up to be used as a skybox in ogre.