Fantasy Skies - is there a market?

[dmarkwick 261]

:)

---------- Post added at 01:12 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:06 AM ----------

It's just a mock-up really ;) I probably won't do this. I was just experimenting with image generation best practise. Turns out it is WAY more easier to do this in Shake than it is in Photoshop. I tried it both ways, in Photoshop I hit a wall of alpha maps and layers, in Shake, I just kept rewiring it 'till it worked :)

[nicolasroger 11]

mabye the starwars mod would be interested in that?

[Darkhorse 1-6 16]

Or Stargate. They have alot of their stuff released already but no real "island" / "planets" yet.

[bushlurker 46]

Clever!

Can you change the sky colour from blue to something different just as easily? - if you could, I think the entire idea would be of massive interest to the Stargate crew...

B

[HarryZhe 10]

well, i've been thinking about making a crossbow...

[dmarkwick 261]

Bleah. Ingame, it sucks serious ass. There is some nasty distortion going on that I'd need to replicate and counter.

[HarryZhe 10]

if you have any way of exporting the skysphere from arma i could show you exactly how to fix that

(just an export of it, not suggesting replacing it or anything)

[[GLT] Legislator 66]

It looks really really great! It would be interesting for fantasy modders .. Star Wars Mod could be interested too. Just imagine the death star shown above while you're fighting on the ground. Movie makers could be interested too - at least I am!

Please continue to release! :)

[clawhammer 10]

Fantasy skies just for star wars mods?

Why? As long as i dont have 2 suns or three moons or another unrealistic thing on the sky you can use it for everythink

[icewindo 29]

I'm interested for sure, especially in the creation of these textures. :p

I've tried to change the sky myself, but I don't get the sky texture to overlap correctly as I don't know the uv layout.

See my test:

Is there any unbinned model of the skymesh flying around?

Ok your texture is distored as you said, DMarkwick, but is it seamless? That's the one error that stands out most for my map. The sky also looks screwed up if you take a look directly at the top, which is seen at around 0:35 .

I also got ugly green horizon textures when I replaced the horizon textures (the mountains) with an empty alpha channel. You can see these abit in the video but I tried to hide them ;) . See the green horizon at 2:20 .

Edited February 18, 2010 by Icewindo

[TRexian 0]

Judging by the pic in the first post, I do believe it is a seamless texture. That is, the bottom of the pic wraps around the horizon, and the top of the pic is the middle of the sky, I think.

[dmarkwick 261]

Ok your texture is distored as you said, DMarkwick, but is it seamless?

Oh yeah, it's seamless, in fact it's the default BIS sky for that overcast setting, all I did was insert the moon. I thought I was accounting for some distortion by elongating the moon in the vertical axis (not shown in the first image, that one is artificially elongated the other way for display on this thread) but it looks like there is more fiddly distortion going on.

[dmarkwick 261]

More on the topic of sky distortion. Using this sky image:

gives me this sort of distortion. As you can see, the mapping is somewhat shocking :)

[paragraphic l 2]

Does the middle line (at your 12) always look straight no matter which line you look at?

In the 2 screens it does, so there is some distortion in the eye-camera maybe? Like the blur when you are exhausted.

[eble 3]

I'll need some 'space type' skys for the tie fighters I'm converting :)

[mr burns 132]

Some very dramatic & apocalyptic colors would be sweet, much like TES:Oblivion has when you get near the darn oblivion portals - oblivion night sky is nice too!

Gives ArmA that special something (photoshopped).

[sickboy 13]

Damn DM! You are into everything aren't you?

Your plot for world-domination progresses step-by-step! :D Soon you will own the skies :)

What's next?

[[GLT] Legislator 66]

Ummm cool .. is there a download link somewhere? :D

Edit:

lol forget it ... just saw it's photoshopped

[dmarkwick 261]

Does the middle line (at your 12) always look straight no matter which line you look at?

In the 2 screens it does, so there is some distortion in the eye-camera maybe? Like the blur when you are exhausted.

No, that line in the image looks straight by coincidence, and probably more due to the reduction of image size than actual straightness. Those distorted lines are fixed, looks to me almost like a dodgy UV mapping problem on the inside of the skybox.

---------- Post added at 01:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:11 PM ----------

Damn DM! You are into everything aren't you?

Your plot for world-domination progresses step-by-step! :D Soon you will own the skies :)

What's next?

Heh, well the sky thing is the result of me looking for solutions to various weather-related issues, it started as an experiment to improve the fog effect and is slowly branching out as I experiment further :D

---------- Post added at 01:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:13 PM ----------

Some very dramatic & apocalyptic colors would be sweet, much like TES:Oblivion has when you get near the darn oblivion portals - oblivion night sky is nice too!

Different sky packs are definitely doable, but they'd be per-session, meaning if you wanted a particular sky you'd need to close down ArmA2, swap out a PBO, and restart ArmA2.

Further to the experiment, I corrected the moon for perspective, but there is still an obvious distortion effect due to the dodgy mapping of the skybox:

It would appear that the skybox introduces mapping errors, but for cloud textures this is mostly undetectable. But introduce something with a definite shape, like the edge of a circular moon image, and the distortion becomes apparent. You'll notice that although the moon edge is definitely wrong, the actual moon surface detail looks OK even though it's still subject to the distortion.

Edited February 19, 2010 by DMarkwick

[lone.wolf 80]

I also like the apocalyptic skies idea as MR. Burns, it look very cool and could give some very nice atmospheric scenarios...

[HarryZhe 10]

If we could get someone to use one of those DX rippers maybe?

The distortion is very uniform you know. i think it's actually being caused by the triangulation.

like, the sky is obviously a dome, but because the uv is stretched towards the top, the grid on the uvmap isnt 1:1 ratio for every square. Now, because you have each quad made up of two triangles, the slight "wobble" you're getting is from where your sky texture is crossing one of the diagonal edges in the triangulated model.

If you have a lot of time on your hands, I could probably help you crack this.

What i propose we do, is take the map (whatever size it is, 1024x1024 or whatever)

and then we make a series of textures of a checkerboard texture, each one with a different checkerboard size, but all divisible by 1024. we apply them one by one and whichever has the least distortion is probably quite close to the uvmap.

If we can figure THAT out, I could eliminate your distortion for you

but, a dxrip of the actual model would be infinitely better and more precise

[icewindo 29]

but, a dxrip of the actual model would be infinitely better and more precise

I dunno how BIS feels about this :p , but I just did that, it works.

"cut open skybox"

http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll246/bla212/sky2.jpg

It also looks interesting from the bottom:

http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll246/bla212/sky3.jpg

The distortion is caused by the obj format, but apparently can be fixed somehow:

Objects in Maya will appear distorted. Open OBJ file in notepad, and look at the first few lines:

#AR=1.38330, FOV=45.00000(height), Xscale:0.57298, Yscale:0.41421, Zscale:1.0

There are non-uniform scale parameters to be applied to the scene."[/Quote]

I don't have maya or Max and don't know how to fix it, I just used blender to import the obj file.

It saves in both obj and 3dr file, the 3dr files can be imported to max with a included plugin which will cause no distortion (distortion only in obj file).

[TRexian 0]

w00t - nice to see another Blender user out there. :D

Nothing much else to add at this point, though.... :doh:

[dmarkwick 261]

I dunno how BIS feels about this :p , but I just did that, it works.

"cut open skybox"

http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll246/bla212/sky2.jpg

It also looks interesting from the bottom:

http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll246/bla212/sky3.jpg

The distortion is caused by the obj format, but apparently can be fixed somehow:

I don't have maya or Max and don't know how to fix it, I just used blender to import the obj file.

It saves in both obj and 3dr file, the 3dr files can be imported to max with a included plugin which will cause no distortion (distortion only in obj file).

That's all interesting stuff :) how exactly did you open that? From within Blender?

I didn't know about the OBJ format distortion thing, but if there's a way to simply reimport the skybox after using another format, then that would be great.

Some of those screenies are a little confusing, what's that terrain object in the first one? And what's the inverted dome object in the bottom-view one?

[HarryZhe 10]

oh jesus we can do this man, upload the obj