This is a Visual Guide of the different sky textures included in Half-Life and how to add them to your map.
The Texture
The sky texture is included in the
halflife.wad and represented by a light blue colour texture named sky.
Simply select the brush you want to have as sky and add the sky texture to it. In most editors, the brush will remain blue and you will not be able to see the actual sky in the 3D or texture window of the editor.
To define the type of sky you want, you will have to change the
Worldspawn properties and add the skyname.
Most editors achieve this by adding a Key and a Value, such as:
Key: skyname
Value: The name of the sky you want to use.
Hammer allows you to enter the skyname directly into the worldspawn properties, but don't be fooled by the
cl_ tag, just enter the skies short name.
Where the sky comes from:
The in-game skies are located in the
Half-Life\valve\gfx\env folder. If they are not there then you will have to unpack your
Pak0.pak file. They are presented in two formats,
.bmp and or
.tga
Notes for making your own sky:
If you want to make your own sky set you need to follow these guidelines:
The size of the picture files:
- Width = 256 pixels
- Height = 256 pixels
- Resolution = 72 DPI
- Format is *.bmp and *.tga
The Names of the images:
- The ground = namedn
- The ceiling = nameup
- Front side = nameft
- Left side = namelf
- Back side = namebk
- Right side = namert
And they have to be placed in the same folder as all the other skies, Half-Life\valve\gfx\env. You will find more information on creating custom skies in the tutorial:
RUST: Creating Environment Maps With Terragen
A visual reference to Half-Life Skies
2desert alien1 alien2 alien3 black city cliff desert dusk morning neb1 neb2 neb6 neb7 night space xen8 xen9 xen10
This article was originally published on
Gamedesign.net RUST.
TWHL only archives articles from defunct websites. For more information on TWHL's archiving efforts, please visit the
TWHL Archiving Project page.
Admer: Yeah, software mode I think
func_cambreaKable: software mode uses tga's too though
func_cambreaKable: i have only tga skyboxes in WAR and they work on software mode
Mikko: software mode falls back to tgas if bmps can't be found
Mikko: bmps can be used by gl too if you have an old graphics card that supports those paletted texture extensions