Custom 2D skybox *or* custom envmap.

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Custom 2D skybox *or* custom envmap.

Postby magman77 on Sun Oct 06, 2013 9:27 pm

Hey all, I have kind of a specific situation here that I guess the engine wasn't entirely built around. I have a large body of water in a dark map that currently reflects the map's cubemaps, but the skybox shows up in the reflections as the map's (daytime) 2d skybox texture despite the sky actually looking a lot more like this.

The problem is that the sky is built from a particle dome in a dark box, and even the live reflections don't seem to notice these important highlights.

I have devised two solutions:

1. To use a custom envmap on the water texture, made from going directly into the skybox and capturing a six-sided cube using the "envmap" command at 512x resolution. So far I've done that, oriented the faces appropriately, then imported every face at once into VTFEdit as an envmap with "generate spheremap" checked in the advanced tab. This, however, hasn't worked, as when I specify this file as the water texture's envmap, it defaults to the map sky as though it doesn't know it's there.

2. To use an entirely different 2d skybox. This option is a bit more universal as I imagine the envmap problem will be very similar for reflective props, so it's really the more favorable option. I basically took the existing faces from the envmap I generated and used those for each face of the skybox. Since I would still be utilizing the 3d skybox, I thought perhaps there would be little harm in making the 2d skybox from those low resolution files. I converted each face's file into a vtf with clamp S / clamp T flagged, made each file's corresponding vmt file with the unlitgeneric shader, ignorez, and nofog, and put them under materials/skybox. When I specify the root name (without the side designation suffixes) the game defaults to the tools/skybox texture or turns the entire sky into a void, and spits out an error mentioning being unable to load sky_urb001 (assuming it's just a fallback texture).

So, that said, I'd be really thankful if anybody had some advice. I am stumped.

Edit:

tl;dr I would like to use six existing images I have to make either a custom envmap or 2d skybox to prevent a large body of water from reflecting the wrong sky, but so far all of the solutions described above have yielded little to no result. This is still stopping my progression on this particular map, and I'm still looking for those with the answers.
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Re: Custom 2D skybox *or* custom envmap.

Postby Stormy on Fri Oct 25, 2013 8:10 pm

You may need to open your map in pakrat and delete the old cubemaps before you can plug in your new custom cubemap (from option 1) I think that would be the best option. SourceSDK 2013 is shitty with cubemaps. This link might help: http://forums.doubleactiongame.com/view ... 107#p51107
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Re: Custom 2D skybox *or* custom envmap.

Postby Armageddon on Fri Oct 25, 2013 9:26 pm

Post the .vmt for the first solution.
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