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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / Free skyboxes

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Clueless
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Posted: 29th Nov 2004 16:08 Edited at: 1st Dec 2004 15:36
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UPDATED 02 DEC 07:00GMT -- Added eight new skyboxes, theme "natural earth skies". Previews images are near the end of this thread.

[EDITED 29 NOV 09:00UTC Added preview images at end of post]

Hey all,

With all the requests for skyboxes I've seen in the forums, I thought I'd share some that I've made in Bryce, if anyone's interested. I've got about 20 so far; thought I'd put a few online and get some feedback before loading up the whole mess.

The download is a zip file, approx 6MB, and contains five skyboxes, along with a simple DBPro program to let you use the arrow keys and mouselook to view them. Each skybox is in its own sub-folder. Each folder contains the sky (CEILO.X) and textures for the various faces of the cube (named 1.bmp through 6.bmp). To view a different box using the sample program, just change the sub-folder name in the subroutine "LOAD_SKYBOX". I'll try to get some screen snaps online tomorrow to give folks an idea if they're worth downloading or not.

http://www.alsip.net/vaxwar/skypack/sky_up.zip

A few notes:
1. The texture files are large bitmaps (approx 700k) and I can probably improve on the load time by converting to JPG, but one thing at a time...

2. I didn't pay much attention to the bottom face of the cube, since I normally slap a matrix or terrain in the middle of the box anyway. You might notice some flipped faces on the bottom of the cube as a result.

3. Bryce pretty much forces a mid-image horizon line on me so usually the bottom 1/2 of the texture isn't of much use due to perspective. Another good reason to put a matrix or terrain in the middle of the box...

Previews:









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BatVink
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Posted: 29th Nov 2004 18:25 Edited at: 29th Nov 2004 18:25
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Very kind of you to share.

using Bryce for Skyboxes is something I'm about to look at myself. Is it easy to export the pieces once you've created the landscape? Is there a function to do it, or do you need to line it all up manually?

For anyone in the UK, Bryce 4 (I think it's 4) is free on 3D World at the moment.

BatVink
http://biglaugh.co.uk/catalog AMD 3000+ Barton, 512Mb Ram, 120 Gig Drive space, GeForce 5200 FX 128 Mb, Asus A7N8X Mobo.
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BatVink
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Posted: 29th Nov 2004 18:27
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Quote: "I can probably improve on the load time by converting to JPG"


To be honest, I don't think it will improve performance. It has to be decompressed when it's loaded anyway.

I do use jpgs, but this is a consideration for cutting down the size of the media on disk. I would imagine it's not good for skyboxes, it will probably make the edges stand out more.

BatVink
http://biglaugh.co.uk/catalog AMD 3000+ Barton, 512Mb Ram, 120 Gig Drive space, GeForce 5200 FX 128 Mb, Asus A7N8X Mobo.
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Lost in Thought
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Posted: 29th Nov 2004 18:43
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Thanks. Looking good. I can definitely use the 0bluewater and withmtnsnow3 ones

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Van B
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Posted: 29th Nov 2004 18:48 Edited at: 29th Nov 2004 18:50
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.DDS is a pretty good format, it'll chop a 700k bitmap downto about 300k, and it loads quicker and uses less graphics memory. .DDS images are compressed directX images, usually textures, and they load directly into graphics memory in their compressed state, because DX engines can handle compressed textures in that format.

If you have PSP or Photoshop, check out the free DDS export/import plugin from the Nvidia website - there are a lot of scary looking toggles and options, but the defaults work out fine for me so it's nice and straightforward to use.

Edit: Please post a screenshot, maybe even one of your boxes in a render of some sort - show us something pretty!.


Van-B


It's c**p being the only coder in the village.
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Don Malone
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Posted: 29th Nov 2004 23:03
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the two samples he posted here

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=43321&b=1

look pretty good.

Thanks for the gift of your skyboxs to the community.

Wasting CPU Cycles since the 286 was a hot machine.
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Clueless
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Posted: 30th Nov 2004 02:23
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Thanks much for the feedback so far. The info on the texture image format is especially interesting, I think that's what I'm going to dig into next.

Over in the 3D forum they pointed out an obvious glitch in the little demo project I supplied. There's a hardcoded path to the skybox object and textures. I started developing these when the cool terrain pluging was first released and initially I had to uninstall/reinstall it a few times which wiped my media folder, so I stuck it somewhere safe & hardcoded a path.
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Clueless
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Posted: 30th Nov 2004 02:33
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@BatVink:
Quote: " Is it easy to export the pieces once you've created the landscape? Is there a function to do it, or do you need to line it all up manually"


Yes, most of the pieces come out of Bryce ready to line up automatically. The exception is the sky and floor, which have to be flipped and rotated a few times in your fave image editor. I'm putting together a quick "how to" for it and hope to be done soon, but basically you just put your camera into the middle of a 512x512 scene and rotate it through a fixed series of rotations in 90 degree increments.

There's a bug in Bryce that screws up your perspective so if you use what seems sensible for FOV, 90 degrees, you come up with mismatched edges. You've got to use 112.5 degree FOV instead.

The last Bryce "gotcha" is you've got to make sure to disable "Link sun to view" in the sky lab, else you'll end up on a world with 4 suns and screwy mismatched lighting on your edges. A lot of the preset skies have this built-in so you've got to keep an eye on the setting if you start working with a different preset.

All in all, I absolutely love Bryce. The interface is kind of weird but I'm used to it now and can crank out a skybox in about 5 minutes. I'm tinkering with some alien-world type skies now, incorporating planets and moons I'm building in Adobe with the flaming pear Lunar Cell plugin. Fun stuff.
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Clueless
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Posted: 30th Nov 2004 06:44
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Quote: "Please post a screenshot, maybe even one of your boxes in a render of some sort - show us something pretty!."


My bad, I should have done that with my original post. Here are some quickie previews of the 4 lateral textures of my 5 sample skies. There's a bit of distortion when I flatten them in the preview but they "seam" to go together very well when viewed in 3D (do I lose points for bad puns?)











Also, I removed the hardcoded path in the sample DBP program I included in the zip file. It now uses a relative path. Please remember it's not intended to be a complete program, it's just something I pulled together from other programs, as a quick way to get the skybox up onto the screen.
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kidsa
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Posted: 1st Dec 2004 07:33
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thanks. when i fix my laptop ill use them

any language used by me will be dbpro(saves me a lot of typing)
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Clueless
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Posted: 1st Dec 2004 13:02
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@kidsa:

Thanks for checking it out and good luck with the laptop.
Also, there was some interest in planet textures over in the 3D forum. I've been building them with Photoshop plugins for some time now. If there's any interest in those, I might take a break from the skybox building and get some planets uploaded also.



Full size image (300k):
http://www.alsip.net/vaxwar/planpack/mosaic01.jpg
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IBOL
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Posted: 1st Dec 2004 13:48 Edited at: 1st Dec 2004 14:05
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i think your skies are extremely beautiful. will download now.

[edit]
tried it. it's amazing. and totally freaky when you get out of the middle...you can start to see the corners, and proportions twist...

@?: i was not able to find bryce 4 for free...if you have a link please post it...

i have MUCH interest in planets...what photoshop plugins do you use?
i recently found 'lunarcell' and it's blowing my mind...
thanks,
bob

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G Man
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Posted: 1st Dec 2004 14:30
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I have a few realistic textures for sky globes if anyone wants them that I made this weekend. Attached is a screen shot showing one of them.

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Clueless
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Posted: 1st Dec 2004 15:33 Edited at: 1st Dec 2004 15:35
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All,

Thanks much for all the great feedback on the skyboxes. It's very much appreciated. Here are the latest eight, special request from the good folks over in the 3D chat forum. The theme is sort of blue sky/white clouds you'd see on Earth on a nice day. Some will look similar to each other as I sort of just picked a scene that looked good and did variations on cloud cover, sun angle, sun disk visible/invisible, etc.

Zip file is 7.7MB, link below. Thanks again

http://www.alsip.net/vaxwar/skypack/sky_up4.zip















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Clueless
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Posted: 1st Dec 2004 15:47
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@IBOL:

Thanks much for the favorable review.

Quote: "
it's amazing. and totally freaky when you get out of the middle...you can start to see the corners, and proportions twist...
"


Yes, there's definitely room for some tweaking on perspective. I'm thinking maybe scale the boxes up in size a bit. In several scenes, just a hint of fog colored like the predominant sky color will easily take care of the corner thing. I'm counting on that, as well as coding to move the skybox along with the camera (as is often the way to do it).

Quote: "
i was not able to find bryce 4 for free...if you have a link please post it...
"


Daz acquired Bryce from Corel on 23 June. Their website is:
http://bryce.daz3d.com I honestly haven't seen anything about Bryce 4 being free though.
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Clueless
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Posted: 1st Dec 2004 15:52
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@IBOL: oops, I forgot to answer that last question:

Quote: "
i have MUCH interest in planets...what photoshop plugins do you use?
i recently found 'lunarcell' and it's blowing my mind...
"


I honestly can't see how anybody's mind would not be blown by Lunar Cell. We're using the same product. When I first saw what it could do, I freaked. Honestly, IMHO, it is one of the coolest pieces of software that has ever been written.

I purchased Lunar Cell as part of a space promo that Flaming Pear did this summer. I also got Glitterato and Solar Cell.

Glit is almost as cool as Lunar Cell. The space screen snap I posted earlier, [href]http://www.alsip.net/vaxwar/planpack/mosaic01.jpg [/href], was done with a Glit nebula and star background. The red sun in the upper left was done in Solar Cell and blended as a layer behind the star layer. I freaked (again) when I saw it, because Photoshop took the damn thing and lit up the nebula from behind!

My next purchase from Flaming Pear is going to be Flood. Have you seen that one yet?
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DARKGuy
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Posted: 2nd Dec 2004 00:25
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Wow Clueless, awesome skyboxes as always!!! you're awesome man, keep up the AWESOME work!!!!

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