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SKY is a
tool texture used to place skyboxes. Applied to a brush to represent the sky. The actual texture shown during play is controlled by the map properties setting "Enviroment Map (
cl_skyname
)". The default is
desert
. Custom skies are normally added to the
gfx/env/
folder and then selected in the map properties before compiling. You can find all the sky names that come with HL by looking in the
gfx/env/
folder (for legacy WON installations, you will find them inside the
pak0.pak
file which you can open with any software that is capable of reading Quake PAKs files like PAKScape).
SKY textures must be applied to visible faces while the rest can be textured with NULL. SKY textures must be applied to ALL faces of the sky brushes, otherwise it will cause problems with sky lighting in newer versions of VHLT's HLRAD.exe.
VHLT also automatically generates clipnodes on SKY brushes, the same effect as a CLIP brush. This can be turned off by passing argument
-noskyclip
to HLCSG.exe. The original Half-Life SDK's compilers don't do this, allowing players to
swim inside SKY brushes as if they were water brushes.
Weather and Counter-Strike: Condition Zero - Deleted Scenes
If you are mapping for Counter-Strike: Condition Zero - Deleted Scenes and you use any entity related to weather, the SKY texture MUST be applied to all faces of the brush, so select "treat as one", when applying SKY textures.
If weather entities aren't working, that might be the reason.
This notice might also applies to other games/mods that control weather.
Sky texture applied to brushes is treated differently during rendering. It does not generate extra wpoly's as normal texture does. Some tutorials tell you that it is good idea to use sky texture as a filler for large unseen areas, I have no evidence that this is a good method of reducing r_speeds, when the hint and skip textures are available.
halflife.wad's SKY texture. Seen in level editors but not in the game
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
It's also particular about having different sky "ceiling" brushes at different levels. Hard to explain why; I think it can only emit light from one side, and so having one sky brush act as both wall and ceiling of a skybox makes it only emit light on the wall side. So it might mean one sky brush emits light on only one face.
My solution was to have rooms with sky be at only one ceiling level each.