HL1 custom skybox Created 11 years ago2012-07-07 08:48:16 UTC by Striker

Do you know where I can get custom skyboxes? I especially need a sea at night skybox, I'm working on a map where I somehow need to give the impression of infinite water... and doing this in goldsource is harder than in source(in source I would've done this with a 3D skybox...).

in source I would've done this with a 3D skybox

Well, you can:

[quote]Creating a 2D skybox for Goldsource, using Source

It is possible to create an area of your map into a 2D Skybox to be used in Goldsource (the HL1-engine). Here's an simple example:

1. Create a large outdoor area with some displacement maps and treelines, and fog to hide the edges. Lets call it carrotjuice .
2. Load the map ingame and turn cheats on ( sv_cheats 1 ).
3. Activate the noclip-mode by simply opening the console and enter "noclip" and hit Enter.
4. Fly to the center of where you want the skybox.
5. Open up the console and type "mat_envmaptgasize 256", hit Enter.
Now type "envmap" and press Enter. Now, 6 TGA-files are now created and saved into a folder named "cubemap_screenshots" in your modfolder ( i.e. for HL2DM: SteamSteamAppsyouraccountHalf-Life 2 Deathmatchhl2mp ). [/quote][url=https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Skybox_%282D%29]Full VDC Article[/url]

As far as painting it from scratch, i've never found a program or a trick to do it very well. I seem to remember somebody mentioning a photoshop plugin to help with this, but i could never find it...

Thanks! I'm going to try this later and report whether I had success or not. But still, aren't there custom skies posted on some resource site?

Steal it from some map or mod... GoldSrc or Source. Or even any game.

wadfather was great for skyboxes.

Nowadays I check out other mods files to see what they've got.

Now now, let's not steal other people's stuff.
It's easy to make custom skyboxes once you know how.

I tried the source method and it made the skybox upside down. I think the direction of view matters...
I'm probably going to try Jeffmod's tutorial too if Terragen is capable of rendering water.

It is. In fact, I recommend using only a water base, because manually edited terrain is a bit hard to control in Terragen 1.