posted 03-14-2000 11:15 AM 
OK, this is how to make a skybox in Terragen.
[TERRAGEN: Get it here -> http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen ]Load up terragen and in the "LANDSCAPE" box click GENERATE TERRAIN. A window appears allowing you to customize your landscape.
Mess around with slider settings (I always keep the METHOD setting at SUBDIVIDE AND DISPLACE) and then press GENERATE TERRAIN then CLOSE (or adjust the sliders and repeat until you have the landscape you want).
Ok, In the LANDSCAPE window the terrain should have appeared (Blue=Water, White and Grey is Land - Note: The higher the elevation the whiter it appears in the window). There is a way to change the landscape manually. For example, in my Eye-Sky where the sun is setting I carved that pit using the Sculpting Tool (Medium sculpt is best).
When sculpting LEFT MOUSE CLICK builds up the landscape and RIGHT MOUSE CLICK lowers the terrain. When you are happy click SAVE in the LANDSCAPE window to save a .terr file.
If you don't want the terrain to be all one colour (or rather various shades of that colour) - for example in the Eye-Sky I had snow over rocky terrain (i.e. white on brown) - then you will need to add various surface maps. Just click ADD in the surface map section. Double LEFT CLICK the SURFACE MAP to bring up this box ->
Click colour to bring up this window to edit the colour of that layer.
Choose the colour and click OK then close the Surface Layer window. Save the surface map.
To move one colour on top of another in the terrain e.g. snow ON rocks, press the move keys.
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Now to check the landscape you have just built we will look into the RENDERING CONTROL.
The RENDER PREVIEW renders a quick view of the map in the little window. The quality of the preview is set using the DETAIL slider. Best to keep it in the middle unless you have a very powerful computer or don't mind waiting a couple of minutes. I'll come to the SETTINGS button in a minute.
Next to the settings button are two tick boxes. This toggles whether to render the sky and/or ground. This will be useful if the nearbox shader in Q3A is ever fixed since then we can render the sky separately from the ground and stick moving clouds in between the two.
For image size I used 512x512. Don't forget though that you have to balance these skies with the total texture MB size in your map (i.e. don't forget Paul said total textures must not exceed 4MB including skies - using jpegs for skies helps though).
I'll come to the CAMERA area later. For now though we need to set the environment to suit our vision for the map.
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Look at the toolbar on the left of Terragen.
Press Water (if you have water in your map).
WATER LEVEL raises and lowers the overall water level in your landscape.
Choose the type of water for your landscape Deep, Muddy, Tropic or Frozen for some preset water values. In the WATER window you can change various things such as reflectivity and wave properties.
When you're satisfied with the water values you have (remember you can keep changing a value and pressing RENDER PREVIEW to see the effect), close the WATER window.
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Now press CLOUDSCAPE in the toolbar.
This area allows you to customize cloud cover.
The cloud lighting settings affect how dark cloud cover makes the scene. Generate clouds does exactly what it says through this window ->
I think Persistence affects how compact the clouds.
Move the LARGEST CLOUD SIZE slider right for huge clouds, left for many small clouds.
Click GENERATE CLOUDS to see the results.
Click CLOSE when you're done.
Then close the CLOUDSCAPE window.
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Now press ATMOSPHERE in the toolbar.
To make an evening setting move the LIGHT DECAY / RED's decay slider to about 50%.
You can also increase fog for an excellent foggy landscape (which will be seen in my next map 
) by moving the HAZE DENSITY slider to increase density.
When you're done close the ATMOSPHERE window.
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Finally, press the LIGHTING CONDITIONS in the toolbar.
Move the red lines around to set elevation and heading of the sun in your landscape. When you lower the sun to an evening elevation a message will appear (under the Shaddows in Atmosphere checkbox) telling you how to deal with evening renders.
For the Eye-Sky sun the only other setting I changed was the CORONA SIZE in the SUN'S APPEARANCE tab.
This increases the glow in the area where the sun is.
For evening skies you may also have to reduce shaddow lightness in the BACKGROUND LIGHT tab to stop the washed out appearance of the scene at evening times.
SAVE YOUR SUN SETTINGS.
When you're done close the LIGHTING CONDITIONS window.
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YOU ARE NOW READY TO RENDER
Go to SETTINGS in the RENDERING CONTROL window.
The RENDER SETTINGS window appears.
Don't touch gamma unless you specifically want to, but when you are ready to do the final render slide the ATMOSPHERE and CLOUD SHADING ACCURACY sliders to HIGH. Render times will now drastically increase even in the little preview window.
Click CLOSE.
MAKE SURE DETAIL (just under the preview window) is all the way to the right (i.e. MAX).
Now look at the CAMERA settings.
First place the camera and target where you want them by LEFT clicking in the little topdown picture of your terrain for CAMERA and RIGHT clicking for TARGET. The target will be changed manually though in a moment for skyboxes. Basically you want the camera near the middle so left click in the middle of the little terrain window.
Now set the ZOOM / MAGNIFICATION in CAMERA SETTINGS to 1. It defaults to 1.414 which will cause the images not to line up correctly.
GO TO WORLD FILE TO SAVE WORLD
Now, for the skybox,
SET PITCH = 0, HEAD = 0
PRESS RENDER IMAGE then save the image as QUAKE3/BASEQ3/ENV/YOURMAPNAME/yourmapnamesky_ft.jpg
SET PITCH = 0, HEAD = 90
PRESS RENDER IMAGE then save the image as QUAKE3/BASEQ3/ENV/YOURMAPNAME/yourmapnamesky_lf.jpg
SET PITCH = 0, HEAD = 180
PRESS RENDER IMAGE then save the image as QUAKE3/BASEQ3/ENV/YOURMAPNAME/yourmapnamesky_bk.jpg
SET PITCH = 0, HEAD = 270
PRESS RENDER IMAGE then save the image as QUAKE3/BASEQ3/ENV/YOURMAPNAME/yourmapnamesky_rt.jpg
SET PITCH = -90, HEAD = 270
PRESS RENDER IMAGE then save the image as QUAKE3/BASEQ3/ENV/YOURMAPNAME/yourmapnamesky_dn.jpg
SET PITCH = 90, HEAD = 270
PRESS RENDER IMAGE then save the image as QUAKE3/BASEQ3/ENV/YOURMAPNAME/yourmapnamesky_up.jpg
NOTE: You may have to rotate the up and dn images in a paint package depending on the HEAD angle you use when you rendered them.
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Now in your .shader file add the lines
textures/yourmapname/yourmapname_skybox
{
qer_editorimage textures/yourmapname/yourmapnamesky1
//This line above refers to a blue square texture I made to apply the shader to map NOTE: The colour of this
//texture affects the light colour, most notable in shaded parts of the map.
surfaceparm noimpact
surfaceparm nolightmap
surfaceparm sky
q3map_sun .5 .37 .19 70 170 33
q3map_surfacelight 80
skyparms env/yourmapname/yourmapnamesky - -
}
Don't forget to take the corresponding sky angles from terragen to place in the q3map_sun parameter.
THAT'S IT !
HOPE THIS HELPS.
Lloyd M
[This message has been edited by Lloyd M (edited 03-15-2000).]
[This message has been edited by Lloyd M (edited 06-24-2000).]
[This message has been edited by Lloyd M (edited 07-09-2000).]
[This message has been edited by Lloyd M : 04-15-2001.]
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