Skybox archive ready for download

Post by **speaker** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 9:03 am

Hi,

I have created a set of archives that contain Q3A skyboxes collected from various WEB sites. Following is the 'readme' of the archive set:

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Disclaimer:
These skyboxes have not been produced by me, I take no credit whatsoever
for them. I have put them together in these archives for convenience and
made a few slight modifications / improvements.

This archive contains a lot of (actually 79) different skyboxes
collected from various WEB sites all around the world. This is the
result of my frustration as a mapper (due to the lack of good skyboxes
in the standard distros of Q3A, Openarena and Nexuiz).

As far as I could determine, these skyboxes are all free to use
non-commercially. Some of them may even be released under the GPL. You
have to check the individual 'readme' files included in the separate
skybox folders. If in doubt, connect the original author, provided that
the e-mail is still valid which is not very likely :-(

Each skybox has a working Q3A shader script, these are stored in the folders
'0_scripts'. Some of these scripts were made by me because the corresponding
original works did not include any.

I have checked the sun's direction & elevation values in every single
skybox in the archive. I used a simple test map for this. The MAP file and
textures necessary to build this test map are in the archive Q3SKYINF.ZIP
(see below). I also included a text file containing instructions on how to
use the map.

The archive is split to several sub-archives because the full lot is
about 128 MB compressed. This would be too large for someone who wants to
download just one specific skybox. On the other hand, if each box would
be a separate archive the whole thing would be a PITA to manage. The archives
are named Q3SKY01.ZIP, Q3SKY02.ZIP, etc.

There is an additonal small archive called Q3SKYINF.ZIP, this contains a
galery of the available skyboxes (one representative image for each box)
as well as a table of the location of the boxes in the different archives.
It also contains the special test map I mentioned above. You should download
this archive first.

I hope that these packs are going to be useful for mappers all around. If
you have a nice skybox (made by you or downloaded) which is not yet in these
archives, just let me know and I will include it if you wish.

Enjoy!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

A couple of teasers

Post by **Hipshot** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 10:21 am

That's one mother load of terragen skies.
Always liked ely_peaks, even though it has "void" errors in it...

Post by **a13n** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 11:40 pm

The last one(ss) is intriguing.
Something is going on down there.
At 1st I thought it was a zombie invasion but the ufo indicates it's aliens'.

Post by **pjw** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 2:22 am

Nice post. That third one is really striking!

Post by **fKd** » Sun Dec 21, 2008 4:16 am

cheers bud, great post

Post by **jal_** » Sun Dec 21, 2008 11:20 am

nice work!

Post by **speaker** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 8:04 am

Hi,

Thanks to everybody for the kind remarks.

Meanwhile I have been working on this stuff. I have contacted the author called 'The Mighty Pete' who produced the sky boxes prefixed by 'mp_' in the archives. He agreed to release his sky boxes under the GNU General Public License. The good news is that this free sky box collection contains altogether 150 (!) items, all great looking, with a wide range of themes.

The boxes can be found at http://wadfather.planethalflife.gamespy.com. You need a FilePlanet account to download them, but don't bother: I will do it for you

I have already downloaded 89 of them. When I have them all, I will make proper Q3A shaders for them (they don't have one at the moment) and put them into reasonably sized archives for download. I will let you know as soon as the archives are ready. Patience...

Post by **speaker** » Tue Dec 30, 2008 10:19 am

Hi,

I have finished putting together the final version of my sky box archive. Actually, it is not a single archive any more. Each sky box has its own ZIP archive that contains the textures, the shader and readme/license info. The collection at present has 220 individual sky boxes. I would appreciate receiving feedback, i.e. if you find any of the boxes defective, please, let me know so that I can correct it or remove it from the collection.

There is an info archive called 'q3skyinf.zip' that contains a gallery and license information in tabular format. This file can be downloaded here:

http://menczel.extra.hu/q3skyinf.zip

Here is the README of this info archive:

-----------------------------------------------------------

Q3SKYINF.ZIP
************

Created by: Laszlo Menczel aka Speaker (menczel AT invitel DOT hu)
Date: 12/28/2008

This archive contains information on the sky boxes that I have collected
from the net. The boxes are available for download at the following link:

http://menczel.extra.hu/q3sky.html

I hope that these sky boxes are going to be useful for mappers all around.
If you have a nice skybox (made by you or downloaded) which is not yet in
the collection, just let me know and I will include it if you wish.

The folder 'gallery' contains a representative image for each sky box in
the collection, The text file 'license.txt' contains a table in which the
sky boxes together with their license type are listed in alphabetical order.

DISCLAIMER
**********

These skyboxes have not been produced by me, I take no credit whatsoever
for them. I have collected them together for convenience and made a few
slight modifications / improvements.

LICENSING
*********

I tried to determine the licensing terms for each sky box (by checking the
accompanying READMEs and the authors' WEB sites). I have contacted some of
the authors to ascertain the license terms. The boxes are divided into the
following groups according to licenses:

ambiquous ----> no clear license terms, but probably safe to use in
non-commercial projects

noncomm ------> free to use in non-commercial projects

gpl ----------> may be freely used in any project and may be distributed
under the GNU General Public License version 2

unrestricted

free to use in any way you can think of (just give proper
credit to the author)

You can check the individual 'readme' files included in the separate
skybox archives. If in doubt, connect the original author, provided that
the e-mail is still valid which is not very likely :-(

SHADER SUPPORT
**************

Each skybox has a working Q3A shader script. Some of these scripts were made
by me because the corresponding original works did not include any. I have
checked the sun's direction & elevation values in every single skybox in the
archive and added the appropriate values to the shaders. I have not adjusted
the color and intensity of the sun, you have to do it yourself.

In a few cases it was impossible to identify an unambiquous light source (sun)
in the skybox. in these cases I left the direction/elevation values at 0/90,
you will have to set them to your preferences.

I used a simple test map for checking the sun's settings. The MAP file and
textures necessary to build this test map are in the folder 'skytest'. I also
included a text file containing instructions on how to use the map.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
****************

Thanks to Grasshopper (member of the Nexuiz message board at 'alientrap.org')
for helping me in determining the licensing terms of the boxes.

-------------------------------------------------

I will try to move this stuff to LvL, but I am not sure if they are willing to handle this kind of artwork. I will let you know.

Post by **pjw** » Tue Dec 30, 2008 5:13 pm

Thanks again for pulling all this together--this is a great resource. (And I used a lot of Mighty Pete's skyboxes back when I was regularly cranking out Q3 stuff--he's an amazing artist.)

Not sure if LvL handles this sort of thing, but if Tig doesn't wish to do so, I'm sure someone here will step up, if you need the hosting space...

VVV See! Hipshot kicks much ass.

Post by **Hipshot** » Tue Dec 30, 2008 5:39 pm

I can help you with a mirror if you need. I should have enough space left for this and it will stay for at least ~5 years on the same place...

How much are we talking about here?

edit: Btw, that would be on my personal space too, so that accessabailbiasda probably would be as big as if you hosted it yourself... forgot that you wrote this in your first post.

Post by **speaker** » Tue Dec 30, 2008 9:23 pm

@hipshot:

Thanks for offering a mirror site. My site is fairly stable, the WEB site provider is a large, well established company in Hungary, it is not likely to disappear in the near future. But a mirror is always useful.

The amount of space needed is about 230 MB. If you can spare that much, please, do mirror the stuff. Just let me know, so that I can notify you in case if an upgrade is done. Contact me if you need technical details (folder structure, setup of links, etc.).

I will try to contact Tig (LvL) anyway, since hosting this collection on LvL would make it available to a wider circle of mappers.

Post by **Tigger** » Thu Jan 01, 2009 9:51 am

@speaker

Send it in to ..::LvL as a single 'submission', and I'll add it. Hex from MHGaming has already given the O.K. to add this huge download on his mirror - so its fine with me :]

Post by **speaker** » Thu Jan 01, 2009 5:47 pm

Tigger wrote: Send it in to ..::LvL as a single 'submission', and I'll add it. Hex from MHGaming has already given the O.K. to add this huge download on his mirror - so its fine with me :]

Thanks. I have just submitted 'q3sky.zip', it contains 'q3skyinf.zip' and a standard LvL README called 'q3skyinf.txt'. Just for my curiosity: How are you going to organize the stuff? (I mean, what kind of link(s) and info will you present on your site?)

Post by **speaker** » Tue Jan 27, 2009 2:44 pm

Hi,

The sky box archive has been finally added to the LvL collection. Thanks Tig! It is a single archive of about 450 MB containing 240 sky boxes. Many of them may be distributed under the GPL.

The boxes are also available as individual entries (ZIP files) from my WEB site. For details see the README of the package on Lvl.

Enjoy!

Post by **InsaneKid** » Tue Jan 27, 2009 6:50 pm

theres a new BIG skybox-archive on LvLworld!

Post by **foralarx2k3** » Tue Jan 27, 2009 11:41 pm

speaker wrote:..The sky box archive has been finally added to the LvL collection. Thanks Tig! ....Enjoy!

Damn it man .... what with seeing Phant's map and now this, now I'm gonna have to think about making another map.

Nice work btw and thanks for doing this.

Ian
AKA Fora AKA Foralarx AKA Oi you!! AKA Who's that darn fool.

Post by **speaker** » Wed Jan 28, 2009 10:26 am

foralarx2k3 wrote: Damn it man .... what with seeing Phant's map and now this, now I'm gonna have to think about making another map.

I am glad that the archive inspires you to make more maps. We need good maps, so fire up Radiant NOW!

BTW, please, try to make your maps w/o using stock textures from the ID PAKs so that they can also be used in games like Nexuiz and Openarena. The best would be to use GPL textures from Openarena and Nexuiz (Nexuiz has lots of Evil Lair's textures distributed under the GPL). I can extract these textures and make ZIP archives for download if you are interested.

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