Download
Start downloading Terragen Classic here : http://www.planetside.co.uk/ -its free
(but be sure to read the EULA for commercial use)
To create a skybox for a 3dRad world with Terragen, follow this procedure:
1. Set water properties
2. Set lighting condition properties
3. Set atmosphere properties
4. Set cloudscape properties
5. Set rendering control properties
6. Render the skybox
Set water properties
1. Click on the Water button to open the Water dialog box.
2. Click on the Waves tab, and set the following values:
* Water level: 0m
* Wave Properties:
roughness: 0
wave size: 0
visibility Effect: 200
3. Click on the Reflections tab, and set the following values:
* Overall Reflection Properties:
Max Reflectivity: 100%
Reflectivity Curve: 100
* Reflection of Lightsources:
Direct sunlight 100%
Reflection spread: 10
4. Ignore the Sub-surface and Shore tabs for now. The important thing is to keep the water level correct and the reflectivity high.
5. Click the close [X] button in the upper right of the dialog box to accept your changes.
6. Save your world file to a directory on your desktop; Terragen defaults to a directory in the Terragen folder of your program files directory.
Set lighting condition properties
1. Click on the Lighting Conditions button to open the Lighting Conditions dialog box:
2. Make the following changes:
* Set the Sun Heading to 90 and the Sun Altitude to 45. This will place the sun at an approximate 10 AM location. In this dialog box,
you can place the sun anywhere in the sky, so it is important to consider direction and time of day.
Using the default orientation of "north is up," as on a map, keep the sun heading close to either 90 (East) or 270 (west),
and you can vary this according to whether you want to reflect a position either north or south of the equator.
Of course, these conditions mimic Earth's, and you may want to deviate completely from this for your gameworld.
* Set sunlight strength to 150%
* Set effect of atmosphere at 100 %
* Keep Base Sun Color RGB values at 256.
This will give you a normal daylight color under the Realistic Sunlight Penetration System radio button.
* Although you're not going to make any changes right now, you can select the Specify Sunlight Color radio button and
click Colour of Sunlight to change the color of the light.
Set atmosphere properties
1. Click the Atmosphere button to open the Atmosphere dialog box:
2. For the sake of simplicity, keep the atmospheric global haze effects settings: all 20% density and 2048 m half-height.
Later you can go back and experiment with different haze effects and get some interesting other-worldly effects.
3. Click the close [X] button in the upper right of the dialog box to accept your changes.
Set cloudscape properties
1. Click on the Cloudscape button to open the Cloudscape dialog box:
This dialog box enables you to determine the extent and size of the clouds.
You can't control individual clouds, but rather the general parameters of the cloud cover.
3. Click Generate Clouds to open the Cloud Genesis dialog box:
Move the Largest Cloud Size slider to determine the size and frequency of the clouds within their random distribution,
then click Generate Clouds to display an example preview of the cloud distribution. Pick a value that looks good to you.
3. Click the close [X] button in the upper right of the dialog box to accept your changes.
Set rendering control properties
1. Click the Rendering Control button to display the Rendering Control dialog box:
Use this dialog box to see small previews of your sky. The preview window is small, so you really are just looking at color,
to see if what you set in the controls reflects what you want for your sky. If this is too small, you can always do a render to see how it will look,
saving time by setting the render size to a manageable 256dpi. Most of the time, the preview window is good enough
if you set the slider under the window to its highest detail setting.
2. To get a good preview, use all the default settings except for the Camera settings.
3. Click Camera Settings to display the Camera Settings dialog box:
4. The Zoom/Magnification setting shows the default value of 1.414, which causes the images to line up incorrectly. Change the value to 1.
5. Click Close to accept your change and close the Camera Settings dialog box.
6. Click Render Settings to dislplay the Render Settings dialog box:
7. Make these changes:
* In the Quality tab, move the Atmosphere and Cloud Shading sliders all the way up to high.
* Check the option for Fast Sub-Pixel Smoothing. If you are using the registered version of Terragen, also check the Ultra and Extra Blended Detail checkboxes.
* Click the Options tab and make sure the defaults are selected: back-face culling enabled, and the Gamma Correction is set to 2.
* Click the Image tab, and set the aspect ratio to a square (height and width the same), and check on the Lock Aspect Ratio checkbox.
This is important because the default size is 640x480, a rectangle, and rectangles do not make good skyboxes.
The bigger you can make your skybox, the better it will look in the game. 960x960 (which is max on the freeTerragen) works well, but may be too big for some purposes.
Rendering a 960 square image will take 15 to 30 minutes, depending on the speed of your computer.
* Click Close to save your changes and close the Render Settings dialog box.
8. Click the Render Preview button to see how your sky looks. If you like what you see, then it is time to render your skybox.
9. First, though, save your Terragen world file: Choose World File | Save World.
Render the skybox
1. In the Rendering Control dialog box, set the Camera Orientation for six different shots, one for each compass direction and one for directly above/below.
2. Set the following values for the Camera Orientation fields:
Direction Head Pitch Bank
North 0 0 0
East 90 0 0
South 180 0 0
West 270 0 0
Top 0 90 0
Bottom 0 -90 0
3. For each direction, click Render Image.
4. After Terragen finishes rendering, save the image by clicking on the Save button in the upper left corner of the rendering window.
Save images like this :
North = skybox_pz.bmp
East = skybox_px.bmp
South = skybox_nz.bmp
West = skybox_nx.bmp
Top = skybox_py.bmp
Bottom = skybox_ny.bmp
Convert them to .jpg using any program, even mspaint will do...
In 3dRad
1. Goto <3d Rad>/3DRad_res/objects/SkyBox/data/
2. Copy folder skybox and rename the copy to MySkyBox
3. Delete all .jpg's in MySkyBox, but leave the .sky file
4. copy your newly created .jpg's to MySkyBox folder
5. copy one of the .jpg to <3d Rad>/3DRad_res/objects/SkyBox/data/index/MySkyBox.jpg
Voila..
Start downloading Terragen Classic here : http://www.planetside.co.uk/ -its free
(but be sure to read the EULA for commercial use)
To create a skybox for a 3dRad world with Terragen, follow this procedure:
1. Set water properties
2. Set lighting condition properties
3. Set atmosphere properties
4. Set cloudscape properties
5. Set rendering control properties
6. Render the skybox
Set water properties
1. Click on the Water button to open the Water dialog box.
2. Click on the Waves tab, and set the following values:
* Water level: 0m
* Wave Properties:
roughness: 0
wave size: 0
visibility Effect: 200
3. Click on the Reflections tab, and set the following values:
* Overall Reflection Properties:
Max Reflectivity: 100%
Reflectivity Curve: 100
* Reflection of Lightsources:
Direct sunlight 100%
Reflection spread: 10
4. Ignore the Sub-surface and Shore tabs for now. The important thing is to keep the water level correct and the reflectivity high.
5. Click the close [X] button in the upper right of the dialog box to accept your changes.
6. Save your world file to a directory on your desktop; Terragen defaults to a directory in the Terragen folder of your program files directory.
Set lighting condition properties
1. Click on the Lighting Conditions button to open the Lighting Conditions dialog box:
2. Make the following changes:
* Set the Sun Heading to 90 and the Sun Altitude to 45. This will place the sun at an approximate 10 AM location. In this dialog box,
you can place the sun anywhere in the sky, so it is important to consider direction and time of day.
Using the default orientation of "north is up," as on a map, keep the sun heading close to either 90 (East) or 270 (west),
and you can vary this according to whether you want to reflect a position either north or south of the equator.
Of course, these conditions mimic Earth's, and you may want to deviate completely from this for your gameworld.
* Set sunlight strength to 150%
* Set effect of atmosphere at 100 %
* Keep Base Sun Color RGB values at 256.
This will give you a normal daylight color under the Realistic Sunlight Penetration System radio button.
* Although you're not going to make any changes right now, you can select the Specify Sunlight Color radio button and
click Colour of Sunlight to change the color of the light.
Set atmosphere properties
1. Click the Atmosphere button to open the Atmosphere dialog box:
2. For the sake of simplicity, keep the atmospheric global haze effects settings: all 20% density and 2048 m half-height.
Later you can go back and experiment with different haze effects and get some interesting other-worldly effects.
3. Click the close [X] button in the upper right of the dialog box to accept your changes.
Set cloudscape properties
1. Click on the Cloudscape button to open the Cloudscape dialog box:
This dialog box enables you to determine the extent and size of the clouds.
You can't control individual clouds, but rather the general parameters of the cloud cover.
3. Click Generate Clouds to open the Cloud Genesis dialog box:
Move the Largest Cloud Size slider to determine the size and frequency of the clouds within their random distribution,
then click Generate Clouds to display an example preview of the cloud distribution. Pick a value that looks good to you.
3. Click the close [X] button in the upper right of the dialog box to accept your changes.
Set rendering control properties
1. Click the Rendering Control button to display the Rendering Control dialog box:
Use this dialog box to see small previews of your sky. The preview window is small, so you really are just looking at color,
to see if what you set in the controls reflects what you want for your sky. If this is too small, you can always do a render to see how it will look,
saving time by setting the render size to a manageable 256dpi. Most of the time, the preview window is good enough
if you set the slider under the window to its highest detail setting.
2. To get a good preview, use all the default settings except for the Camera settings.
3. Click Camera Settings to display the Camera Settings dialog box:
4. The Zoom/Magnification setting shows the default value of 1.414, which causes the images to line up incorrectly. Change the value to 1.
5. Click Close to accept your change and close the Camera Settings dialog box.
6. Click Render Settings to dislplay the Render Settings dialog box:
7. Make these changes:
* In the Quality tab, move the Atmosphere and Cloud Shading sliders all the way up to high.
* Check the option for Fast Sub-Pixel Smoothing. If you are using the registered version of Terragen, also check the Ultra and Extra Blended Detail checkboxes.
* Click the Options tab and make sure the defaults are selected: back-face culling enabled, and the Gamma Correction is set to 2.
* Click the Image tab, and set the aspect ratio to a square (height and width the same), and check on the Lock Aspect Ratio checkbox.
This is important because the default size is 640x480, a rectangle, and rectangles do not make good skyboxes.
The bigger you can make your skybox, the better it will look in the game. 960x960 (which is max on the freeTerragen) works well, but may be too big for some purposes.
Rendering a 960 square image will take 15 to 30 minutes, depending on the speed of your computer.
* Click Close to save your changes and close the Render Settings dialog box.
8. Click the Render Preview button to see how your sky looks. If you like what you see, then it is time to render your skybox.
9. First, though, save your Terragen world file: Choose World File | Save World.
Render the skybox
1. In the Rendering Control dialog box, set the Camera Orientation for six different shots, one for each compass direction and one for directly above/below.
2. Set the following values for the Camera Orientation fields:
Direction Head Pitch Bank
North 0 0 0
East 90 0 0
South 180 0 0
West 270 0 0
Top 0 90 0
Bottom 0 -90 0
3. For each direction, click Render Image.
4. After Terragen finishes rendering, save the image by clicking on the Save button in the upper left corner of the rendering window.
Save images like this :
North = skybox_pz.bmp
East = skybox_px.bmp
South = skybox_nz.bmp
West = skybox_nx.bmp
Top = skybox_py.bmp
Bottom = skybox_ny.bmp
Convert them to .jpg using any program, even mspaint will do...
In 3dRad
1. Goto <3d Rad>/3DRad_res/objects/SkyBox/data/
2. Copy folder skybox and rename the copy to MySkyBox
3. Delete all .jpg's in MySkyBox, but leave the .sky file
4. copy your newly created .jpg's to MySkyBox folder
5. copy one of the .jpg to <3d Rad>/3DRad_res/objects/SkyBox/data/index/MySkyBox.jpg
Voila..
