I am using A6 Commercial . I have a skycube model entity skinned with a 32-bit tga skin with NO banding. When I add it as the sky background, and set the video mode for 32-bit color, I STILL get banding on the sky. Any ideas?

Make sure the image(s) have an alpha channel and are saves as 32 bit WITH alpha.

Then the engine will render them as 24 bit images, if there is no alpha channel in the image, you will get dumped down to 16bit (which bands horribly)

If you dont know what i mean by alpha channels, mail me at bigtonenz@ihug.co.nz and i'll talk you through it or do it for you if you dont have photoshop.

Blue

I understand what you are saying.. it is kind of crazy though. Anyone know WHY it is implemented this way?

The problem is not the engine, it's the current mdl-format: If the skin of a model is a 32bit tga (with alpha-channel), the model is saved with a 32bit skin, all other skins are saved as 16bit. This limitation will be gone in future versions.