Yes I am a fan of PAYING for software, although my wallet doesn't like it!

I like the terrain generation, I think its nice and fast and with some basic tweaking you can create some fantastic imagery. The sky....yes hmmmm! I must agree with you Frank, I find the clouds look very 2D regardless of the mode, in fact 3D looks like layers of 2D, probably exactly what it is! lol. No matter what settings I use I seem to end up with a slightly poor cloud image, however a little touch up in photoshop can sort this right out, but it's labour intensive and ...well I can't draw! lol

So as a REGISTERED user of 3DStudio Max (just to ensure there's no confusion ) I am looking at creating cloud layers or even complete sky systems here. I am curious though, is it possible to combine sky cubes? I mean, so render a terrain_skybox with alpha for transparency, then underlay a sky background? Can you force movement in the skybox? so creating several layers of clouds and putting them on a gentle spin to create the illusion of moving clouds??? I appreciate this might be a little off topic, sry for the hijack!

EDIT: I appreciate you have a sky package for sale, and im not asking you to hand over all your juicy secrets, im just trying to get a handle on the limitations and possibly options available. Thanks

if i remember right, terragen costs 100$ , if you buy terragen2 when its out, you get 100$ off the prizem then.

i just saw, they have a endOfYear price at 79$ , go out and get it:)

for moving clouds, you could also look at my skySystem2

indiGlow: Yes. You could do something like that. In Gamestudio (and in Torque) you could use a sky cube for the background and a second layer for the moving clouds. I would suggest to use a sky sphere model with some transparency to create a simple rotation.

If that is a needed option for many developers then I could render some sky spheres with layers of clouds. But first I want to finish the night sky package.

OT: but time for another one of my wierd ideas (am on a break at work ). Can one of those 'grass around player' scripts be modified so that you can have 'stars around player?' Meaning some small textures with stars, with alpha (and maybe a mtl effect) so when player looks up there are some better defined stars close by him; along with the usual skycube with some dim stars this might provide a better looking night sky.

Yes. A script that creates stars can do much more. You could have some shiny flasing stars. You could also create some shooting / falling stars. That would make a fancy night sky.

There is a function in Gamestudio to draw on a texture. May be that could be a start.

So is that a my lips are sealed comment ello? lol no worries

Do you mean sky stars bupaje? Might have some problems with perspective there... I wonder if you could wrap a texture several times, maybe on a skydome? like a 1024x1024 tiles N times? Maybe its just a question of making a huge inward sphere and applying a star tile to each face, or group of faces. Use an Alpha-map tga and create a few layers of spheres, and use a skycube backdrop for very distant stars...

...if you follow that theory through, you could build a very detailed sky system in this way, changing the sphere textures over time, you could easily bring up the sun, fade in some clouds and you could also rotate them to create movement....

...maybe skySystem3 eh Ello?

already working on that, but with small steps(too less time)

Finally we managed to offer the first two sky cube packages at Dexsoft:

http://www.dexsoft-games.com/skycubes.html

Night and fantasy sky cubes will follow very soon.

Best regards,
Frank

Quote:

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8 sky cubes in 6*1024 and 6*512px resolution, in jpg format

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In JPEG format Frank?

Does that mean that we have to convert them to TGA later to make them work in gamestudio?

Or does gamestudio now support jpeg skies?
If so, then I'm not aware of that.

TGA's are much bigger than JPG. So I converted them to JPG (highest quality) to keep dowload files smaller.