Wolfire Games Forums

You're right,

i can make nice terrains, clouds and all, but i cant render to cubemap, if they were skydomes it would be easyer, but when i have Genetica 3.0 studio i can make incredible cubemaps, but i cant with 2.5 pro wich i have now, i mainly ise anim8or and terranim8or for 3d, but i cant render to cubemap yet, so sorry

I use blender for skybox prerenders. Before, I used terragen, which helps a lot if you want to render a stunning landscape with a few clicks.
With blender, you've got a lot of modeling and material adjusting to do. So it's a bit tedious. terragen is probably the best choice for skyboxes, although the free version was kind of limited when I used it the last time. May have changed for the better, I dunno.

Ah, there you go:

Registered users will also have access to priority email support, and will be able to render images larger than 1280 x 960, terrains larger than 513 x 513 and enhanced anti-aliasing modes.

So it's still too limited for my uses. Skyboxes are usually rendered pretty hires.
You can still try it though.

I still don't get why anyone would use skydomes, to be honest. Skyboxes are way easier to handle.. I think skydomes are nonsense.

well we use skydomes in our game, http://users.atw.hu/eldergames/screenshots.html

doenst look too bad

well i might look in to terragen, but i prefer making my own terrains with my own heightmaps

skydomes vs skyboxes:

That's my point, it looks exactly the same.

One benefit might be easy day-night-coloring, another accurate positioning of dynamic sky elements. I'll give you that.

But still, meh. Not enough benefits in my book to outweigh the discomfort of creating / using it.

terragen:

You can of course use your own heightmaps in terragen, and there's a nifty editor to create such.
And then you can apply procedural effects, like terrain aging or random population... And so on. Just check out the features.

I remember Terragen… I had a play around in it for a while. It's great, you can create any landscape you want to, and it's very easy to use. Wait, am I reviewing it or talking about it? Buggery! *insert to the batsomething noise here*

Uhm, yeah… I think writing reviews on Newgrounds has gotten to me. And it's only my first day as a registered Newgrounds user! Yaaaaay… *thump*

I used skyboxes in Lugaru because I could use it with the transparent fog to make it look as if the environments are much larger than they are. That is, I could just render the entire terrain from 6 different perspectives (to get a texture for each cube face), and then render it behind the real-time terrain.

Funkdude wrote:well we use skydomes in our game, http://users.atw.hu/eldergames/screenshots.html
doenst look too bad

You made this game, or at leaste helped?
Cool beans!
bloody huge image
If I had a better computer I would try it out!

Constructive criticism:

I love the theme of the GUI, but I find it looks a little rubbery. The Font (not in this screen shot) looks a bit out of place, and I have seen that font in Minions of Mirth. You should probably make a new font to go with the GUI, or at least something something space age'ish.

if you keep on going, you might steal some ones thunder...

Funkdude wrote:well we use skydomes in our game, http://users.atw.hu/eldergames/screenshots.html

doenst look too bad

well i might look in to terragen, but i prefer making my own terrains with my own heightmaps

you know id there's going to be a mac release, or what?

Mac version, i honestly dont know, i made this? yeah, well all the textures, some models, all heightmaps and paitmaps (combination of texturebombing and height based texturing)

well thanks for the suggestions, but if you like you can mail them, i kinda feel this isnt the topic for our game and i really like lugaru, so i dont want to rub the dev team in the wromg way

well, cubemap/skybox images must align right? i dont think i can do that yet in anim8or, perhaps in blender but i dont like the interface, this summer ill have new software, so then i can blow everyone away with new skyboxes

the original ones look very good, just a bit low res compared to the rest in my mod, so thats the only reason for me to change them

Chainsaw man wrote:

Funkdude wrote:well we use skydomes in our game, http://users.atw.hu/eldergames/screenshots.html
doenst look too bad

You made this game, or at leaste helped?
Cool beans!
bloody huge image
If I had a better computer I would try it out!

Constructive criticism:

I love the theme of the GUI, but I find it looks a little rubbery. The Font (not in this screen shot) looks a bit out of place, and I have seen that font in Minions of Mirth. You should probably make a new font to go with the GUI, or at least something something space age'ish.

if you keep on going, you might steal some ones thunder...

You can try it out anyway, there;s a low end mode in it that supports lower end pc's, itll have less graphic detail and all

when trying it, look closely at the footsteps

Thanks... I will get myself up to downloading it on Dial up...

I was testing some skins to see if they were seamless and would fit, after a while i got bored and came up with this

Wow...it's a...rainbow vortex bunny...

MY

EEEEEYYYYYYYEEEESSSSS

Weren't coloured in. Make them green or something.

ON the skins, where do the seams form? If someone could figure that out, =less guess and check, and smoother blending. It would be good for advanced textures like...
DEMON LEFT FOOT!!!! muahahahahahahaha