Skies

[thetanman]

I need to know how to do skies and put clouds in the skies. Everytime somebody does make a sky, they always say that it is made from a dome shape. I don't understand what they are talking about. Can somebody please help me?

[Caroline]

Disclaimer - I know nothing about it! But here's a couple of links that might get you going:

 

http://www.ypoart.com/tutorials/skylights-intro.htm

 

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...mp;hl=sky++dome

 

Have a search for "skylight".

[Luuk Steitner]

What Caroline is talking about are sky-light rigs and not what you mean - I guess. I have made sky domes before which are image or video textures applied as decal to a large sphere. If the camera never looks up it's also possible to use a cylinder for the sky.

For the dome version I always use a program which is able to generate this images that can be applied to the sphere. You will need something like that to get it done. I can not tell th enames of those programs I use for that here since that's not allowed on this forum.

You can also take some pictures and use a paint program to make it suit your decal. In this case the cylindrical version is much easier to make.

 

Good luck with it!

 

P.S. if it isn't working out for you I'm willing to make a sky texture for you.

[Caroline]

My bad - brain read but did not process, thanks for pointing out, Luuk.

 

Black_mage has one for download, that I just rendered and looks good, but you have to register at Turbosquid (free):

http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/307149

 

You could also try these links:

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=22031

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=20048

[the_black_mage]

oops Caroline already linked it lol...

[goodguy20k]

Hmm... Ain't that Win98 wallpaper? That's funny!

[Caroline]

Yes, I linked it, mage, any doofus could do that - what about all the words of wisdom that you can throw in about actually using it?

 

Did you have to apply the decal in a special way? Does it need special lighting? Does it resize OK? What about all the other questions that I don't know to ask?

[Luuk Steitner]

Yes, I linked it, mage, any doofus could do that - what about all the words of wisdom that you can throw in about actually using it?

 

Did you have to apply the decal in a special way? Does it need special lighting? Does it resize OK? What about all the other questions that I don't know to ask?

 

When you apply a texture to a sphere set the 'application method' to spherical, if you use a cylinder set it to cylindrical. This option is only visible when you have started to position your decal. When you need to do the render in high resolution make sure you sky is high res too, infinite resizing won't make it look better. I never light my skies. I make the sphere that large that it isn't affected by any lights. Use the 'ambient' setting of the sphere's surface to set the brightness. This way the sky will look the same as the picture in every direction.

[C-grid]

A dome represents the (atmoshperic)environment, a 3D-scene dome could be a cube, sphere or oval-sphere, most of times when a sphere is used the bottom will be deleted so you get a sort of hat-shape.

 

In A:M I normally create a frontside 3 CP oval-spline and lathe it in 4 steps, the lowest CP will be beneath the horizon, create an action, switch to muscle mode,select all, press 'N' rotate the pivot, right-mouse-click>>flatten, apply decal. In the option of this model, you should set flat to ON.

 

When you don't want the decal-approach, create the dome, make new material, change attribute to toonnation>>skysomething.

 

 

Niels

[the_black_mage]

well i made it so that people could have objects past the clouds, you know like planes, a sun, a meteor, etc.

[the_black_mage]

Yes, I linked it, mage, any doofus could do that - what about all the words of wisdom that you can throw in about actually using it?

 

Did you have to apply the decal in a special way? Does it need special lighting? Does it resize OK? What about all the other questions that I don't know to ask?

 

When you apply a texture to a sphere set the 'application method' to spherical, if you use a cylinder set it to cylindrical. This option is only visible when you have started to position your decal. When you need to do the render in high resolution make sure you sky is high res too, infinite resizing won't make it look better. I never light my skies. I make the sphere that large that it isn't affected by any lights. Use the 'ambient' setting of the sphere's surface to set the brightness. This way the sky will look the same as the picture in every direction.

 

 

or you could just do flat shaded.....