Hi folks

Ok. I've got 2 levels of my son's racing game finished. I took the summer off to build a treehouse.

The background is pretty lousy. Its basically a box with the top textured as the sky, the bottom textured as grass and the sides textured as wood.

I want to add a better background. Trees, buildings, grandstands etc. But I have no idea how to begin.

I tried creating grandstands with MED, but then I realized the game won't be interacting with the background. Scenery will just be there to make the scene more realistic.

What are the ways to quickly manufacture a non interactive background for a game?

He wants one level to be the streets of New York City and I'd rather not model every building, sewer grate and trash can.

Mark

if the scenery is far distant you could use 2 demensional pictures (.bmp,.pcx,.tga ...) as sprites.

closer stuff could be low to mid-poly models, which use an lod system.

For the sky: I would recommend a sky cube which is in fact a large image consisting out of 6 parts the four directions (north,east,south,west) and bottom, top.
Don't ask me which order though.
You can find some free ones on the net and in the reference manual is an example for a skycube.
However you have to remember to have a hollowed cube around the whole level with a texture assigned to it.
This texture needs the "sky" flag to be set to "on"