Skyboxes, looked at with an unlocked camera?

[Legacy_olivier leroux]

               I realize that in default NWN you're not supposed to look up at the sky so I'm not complaining that the unlocked camera hack allows me to see weird things that weren't meant to be seen, like what a skybox really looks like and what's 'beyond' it.

But I'm curious why some skyboxes still manage to uphold the illusion even if looked at closely with the unlocked camera while others show a different color at the top of the skybox cube or in the worst case even a distorted or topsyturvy image of the skybox walls around my PC. Is it a matter of quality, meaning with a little more effort it would be possible to make all skyboxes look good even at the top side and it's just not done because without the unlocked camera you don't see it anyway? Or is it a matter of theme (and luck), meaning with some skies the top of the skybox autmatically matches the walls, more or less by happenstance, while with others it's impossible to get it right?

Thanks for taking the time to answer and satisfy my curiosity! '>
               
               

               

                     Modifié par olivier leroux, 18 juillet 2010 - 10:52 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy__six]

               A lot of custom skyboxes (not sure about the default ones) are basically made as a curved cylinder with no top in order to save on resources that won't normally be rendered, and ones that are full domes often have little attention paid to them simply for the same reason. However, generally speaking mapping a texture to an object as if it were a cylinder yields much higher quality results than mapping it out as a sphere - firstly because it's more efficient in terms of texture space and the texture is spread more evenly, and secondly because that way it's a lot easier to produce the skybox texture itself, as you only have to worry about texture tiling laterally.



With more work and perhaps use of larger texture sizes and more intelligently mapped models it's perfectly possible to make skyboxes that look good from any angle with the same level of detail as existing custom skyboxes. I myself have used a sort of a lazy trick with my skyboxes to get a very smooth effect by fading them out with transparency at the very top. It has the disadvantage that you can't have clouds directly overhead but it seems to work pretty well.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_olivier leroux]

               Oops, seems I completely forgot to thank you for that helpful explanation. So - thanks! Much appreciated.


               
               

               

                     Modifié par olivier leroux, 21 juillet 2010 - 01:37 .