Custom skybox not working? Created 7 years ago2017-08-15 16:57:02 UTC by NintyFan290

So I need to make a custom skybox for a mod I'm working on. Apparently you're supposed to use something called Terragen but it's way too complicated for me and the tutorials I read were for a much older version so they were no help. So I went the silly route and pasted the textures I wanted for the sky into MS Paint and saved them in HL/valve/gfx as 256x256 bitmaps and then saved them again as .tga files (before anyone asks, yes I did all the required angles: bk, rt, fr, etc.). Then I went to hammer and made a cube, textured it with "sky", hollowed it and created a platform. Then I went into map properties and put "ice" (the prefix for all my textures) in the sky section. But when I load the map in HL, the sky is one of the desert ones. Could somebody please tell what I'm missing/doing wrong?

You don't have to use Terragen for making skyboxes, any tool like Photoshop will suffice, as long as it supports exporting compressed .bmp and .tga files.

Don't forget the naming conventions and where your textures go. Also don't forget to set the name in worldspawn.

<mod directory>\gfx\env\<skyname><suffix>.bmp/.tga

Names go like <skyname>lf for example. You can do: lf, rt, up, dn, bk, ft. Left, right, up, down, back, and front; respectively.

I have already done all that.

Check the console for errors, it should print something like "R_LoadSkys: Couldn't load icert.bmp" or "LoadTGA: Only type 2 and 10 targa RGB images supported" if it fails to load.

Yep it came up with both of those. Is there any way to fix them?

So I went the silly route and pasted the textures I wanted for the sky into MS Paint and saved them in HL/valve/gfx

They should be in gfx/env.

Woops, yeah I already did that, I just forgot to mention it.

The TGA file needs to be either an "uncompressed true-color image (2)" or a "run-length encoded true-color image (10)". You'll need to make sure that they're saved with either encoding.

I use paint.net for .tga's. How do I change the encoding or is it automatically chosen when I save as .tga?

I've never used paint.net myself, but when i use GIMP to export as TGA i get the option to use RLE compression. Check if that's an option, otherwise you may have to use GIMP instead.

I exported them all twice using GIMP with RLE compression but the error still shows up in console.

And the skybox is still a desert.

Can you give us a link to download your skybox files?

Maybe that could help.

Probably could of just used something like mediafire but too late now I guess...

You saved the TGA's as 8bit; skybox TGA's are supposed to be 24bit full color. Also im pretty sure you don't use RLE compression.

As a test i resaved the TGA's to 24bit but the order you have the sides in are wrong.I have a guide with 5 different methods of Custom skybox creation. You can substitute GIMP out for the photoshop bits and i use irfanview which is free
http://www.the303.org/tutorials/gold_texture_p8.htm

Ah, thank you. I will try that guide later.

!t works! Thank you!