Best skybox ever

Community Forums/Showcase/Best skybox ever

JoshK(Posted 2003) [#1]
If I threw some random rocks in there it would be perfect. I used 10,000 trees and generated a complete 1024x6144 environment map. Here is 1/3 of it, at a lower res:



Rimmsy(Posted 2003) [#2]
Nice. but why'd you have to generate it at that enormous size if you're going to squash it down to a max 1024?


JoshK(Posted 2003) [#3]
It's en env map. Each side is 1024x1024.


Rob(Posted 2003) [#4]
Why?


JoshK(Posted 2003) [#5]
Because it looks good. Go play with your puzzle game.


Apollonius(Posted 2003) [#6]
Rob made a puzzle game? or is the "." being sarcastic?

Nice work tho :|


Dynamo(Posted 2003) [#7]
Very cool, what did you use to generate that?


JoshK(Posted 2003) [#8]
It's just Blitz code. I used terragen to make a heightmap, a colormap, and a lightmap, loaded the terrain, and wrote an algorithm to place trees.

This reminds me of the Lake Tahoe area in the Summer, near my house. Very Sierra Nevadas-looking:



Koriolis(Posted 2003) [#9]
Because it looks good. Go play with your puzzle game.
Glad to see you've come back with all your nice language. *sigh*


SabataRH(Posted 2003) [#10]
Being a fan of outdoor scenes in games I must say this scene looks very nice. A bit high on the resources though 1024x6 = tons of fillrate (if used in a realtime game enviro), but for renders that is very gorgeous.


Anthony Flack(Posted 2003) [#11]
Yes, it looks nice. Hardly the best skybox ever, but pretty good for a blitz render. But I have to agree; 24Mb of textures for a skybox is massive overkill for any practical application (not just for Rob's hypothetical puzzle game!)


Rob(Posted 2003) [#12]
Looks like the alien space bog battle with the toilet brushes of doom.


Koriolis(Posted 2003) [#13]
LOL! That would make a terrific game title you know :)
Now I have my killer game idea, thanks Rob ;p


Gabriel(Posted 2003) [#14]
Why?


I'm guessing it's something to do with a thread on TGC forums which is titled something like "I'll make you some skyboxes if someone buys me Terragen."


Rob(Posted 2003) [#15]
I was asking why his env maps were so damn impossible-to-use huge.


Gabriel(Posted 2003) [#16]
Oh.. well same answer really. The higher res they are, the better they look and the more persuasive the case.


poopla(Posted 2003) [#17]
Is mr. "." halo? Whats up? AAAAAHHHH!!!!!


Gabriel(Posted 2003) [#18]
Is mr. "." halo?


Yep It's AFKAH ( Artist Formerly Known as Halo. )


Filax(Posted 2003) [#19]
Very nice !


Apollonius(Posted 2003) [#20]
Only problem if you look far it looks like trees are fading away :o


mag.(Posted 2003) [#21]
Very nice. Really impress me. Here a few general question.

The above is render in Blitz?

How do you get the water reflection? You don't mirror the whole thing right?

And the tree is just an alpha map right?

By the way its so real.


JoshK(Posted 2003) [#22]
Yes, it's Blitz, with 4x antialiasing.

To get water:
1. Render the scene without water
2. Create an environment map
3. Apply the env map to the water and render the scene with the water.

Unreal 2 uses some 1024x1024 skyboxes, and they look great.

The tree is a model with a lot of pieces with an alpha-mapped texture applied to them. It is not just a flat sprite.


Genexi2(Posted 2003) [#23]
How long did it take to render that?
(took 8 minutes in Terragen to create my new 1024x768 desktop at max renderin' quality, I wonder how long Blitz took to make that with all those trees :-/ )


JoshK(Posted 2003) [#24]
I can draw it in real time at like 2 fps. It takes about a minute to set up the scene. The scene is about 150,000 polys, with alpha blending on 2/3 of those.


Wiebo(Posted 2003) [#25]
I've seen better. sorry =]


Bouncer(Posted 2003) [#26]
"Because it looks good. Go play with your puzzle game."
What a great remark!

It's been so nice in the blitz forums lately... but everything good must end.

And could you stop using "best", "greatest", "coolest", "world's greatest" etc. expressions about your work, when it's all pretty much mediocre.


skn3(Posted 2003) [#27]
I agree with bouncer.


(tu) sinu(Posted 2003) [#28]
crawls out from under rock, after just trying robs puzzle game, and asks 'may i speak?' then the voice from above answers with a 'yes, you may, inferior being'
i think the second picture is top notch, that's all i gotta say speaks the inferior being and quickly shoots back under the rock.

ps halos back and i must say i missed his attitude on the boards, was getting too nice around here. Remember it's xmas though so everybody be nice until after :)


JoshK(Posted 2003) [#29]
Oh, the inferiority complexes are abound.

I'd release the program, with a settings script, but you'd just complain.

If I released the source, I would get hate mail.


c5ven(Posted 2003) [#30]
images are okay. trees lack a bit of variety imo. i'd expect that for a 3D environment but not a skybox. but given the process...

the "sun" looks a bit odd; as if photographed through a cross-hatch filter. notice a centered, vertical line on the second image. assume this corrects an overlap bug similar to what Q3 has with it's skyboxes?

unfortunate people don't post skyboxes in 3D. rarely see that. would be nicer than seeing flats.


(tu) sinu(Posted 2003) [#31]
hope you don't mean me, i was just kidding around as usual, i know your a way better coder than me so when you do stuff such as release code, i always checkit out and really appreciate.

ps only total losers send hate mail over these kind of things!


ckob(Posted 2003) [#32]
i can see the line in the center can anyone else??

other then that this looks very kool


CyberHeater(Posted 2003) [#33]
This looks great. Please release the source. Would be a great addition to my library.


jfk EO-11110(Posted 2003) [#34]
I agree with Anthony: 24 Megs for the enviroment map is a waste of videoram. while I agree that the horizon should be high res to prevent it looking blurred the sky does not have to be that highres. you can use a horizon ring that is using 4 rows on one texture.


Zmatrix(Posted 2003) [#35]
I dunno about best ever...but it looks pretty damn nice.

Its only 150,000 polys?

(I know the point wasnt realtime rendering,)
But,what if ya merged all the tree entitys into a single surface after placing them.
It should render much faster then.



zmatrix


Agamer(Posted 2003) [#36]
Are you gonna release the source it looks so usefull for something I am doing!


Panno(Posted 2003) [#37]
JESUS!


patisawesome(Posted 2003) [#38]
Cool skybox!


Smurfpuss(Posted 2003) [#39]
wow amazing