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Skybox for your UO map the Madcrow Way

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Madcrow explains his way of making a skybox for a UO map

Some of the tutorials on skyboxes use the CSG Subtract tool.. This is a no no. I have received some requests for some beginner tutorials so I thought we could look at some basic components of a map and go though them step-by-step. We will start with making a skybox. The only knowledge you need to know before beginning is how to create a brush and how to change the grid spacing.

Start by making your skybox out of individual caulk brushes (CSG is EVIL) Lets begin by creating a brush the size it which you want your skybox to be. This is predetermined based off of the size of the map you are creating. You want it to be large enough to completely enclose your maps contents; yet, you don’t want it to enclose excessive area that there is no map content.

Step 1) Let's create our bottom brush...

Step 2) Then we press the spacebar to replicate the brush...

Step 3) Now we need to move this brush up to be the top of our skybox. Ensure that your brushes are directly over top of one another. Press ctrl + tab to cycle to the side view and raise the top brush to the required height...

Step 4) Now, we will create a side wall, dragging out a brush in the 2d window - only going from corner to corner...

Step 5) We then press the spacebar to replicate it and move it into position opposite the side brush...

Step 6) Now if you are creating a perfect square for example then this step is easy. Just select both of your side brushes and then press the spacebar to replicate it and move them to the other side of the box. If not then draw out a brush to the cornors of the others so that the brush is width and heght of other brushes and thn press spacebar to replicate it and move it to the opposite side of the box and line the brush up as above. Thus enclosing the box...

Step 7) Next we will miter the corners so as not to have overlapping brushwork. This is not a must but I highly recommend it for good, clean, fundamentally sound mapping.

Some confusion is created, because some of you press "V".. Well this is a bad habit because you can actually collapse a brush into itslef if you manipulate the vertices rather than the edge...

Highlight one of the brush sides of the skybox and hit “E”. Small blue dots should appear at the vertexes of the brush...

Step 8) On the inside, side of the brush, we want to pull the two blue verts on the brush edge towards the center of the brush. You will do so by clicking on the blue dot vert and dragging it into position. Again it will take two times per edge as you are performing this to the top and bottom verts of a brush edge. When your done hit “E” again to get out of vertex editing mode...

Step 9) Here you can see that all the corners are now mitered and are fitted perfectly...

Step 10) Hitting Ctrl + tab to change view in 2d window so that you are on front view, here you can see that the top and bottom brushes are not mitered...

Step 11) The result of mitering the top and bottom brushes...

Step 12) Once you have completed all the brush sides that make up the skybox you will have a clean mated skybox that has no leaks. Don’t forget to do this to all the sides of the skybox (I consider the top and bottom as sides when discussing this tutorial). Cycling though and using the three 2D views should give you a view down the profile of each side so that you can miter all the sides (You may not need to cycle depending on your radiant layout)...

Step 13) Now this is where people have made mistakes because most tutorials tell you to select only the inside brushes of your skybox.. But this is for COD not CODUO. For CODUO, if you do only select the inside faces then your artilery will not be able to go through.. So for UO select the whole brushes of your skybox then pressing "S" to bring up the Surface Inspector and using the Official Map Worldspawn Settings which can be found at http://www.modsonline.com/Tutorials-read-106.html.. enter in the sky you wish to use as shown.. For this tutorial I have used mp_carentan.. Now if you are like me and don't like the tiled effect, simple press Fit to fit to brush, then Ok...

Step 14) Now to enter in Worldspawn Settings press "N" to bring up the Entity box and enter in the definition, for this tutorial I have used Suncolor in the Key box.. then enter the numbers inthe Value Box and press Enter...

Phew there you go.. tried to get it as basic as I could... Remember that, in the list from the link, the first "item" is the key and the second "item" is the value. You need to press enter after each key/value pair to write them into your map.

As you see, the skybox of a map can be very simple to create and setup. Some keys to keep in mind when working on a skybox are:
1) Make sure you don’t have any “holes” in your skybox. This can be easily avoided by working on the grid and cleanly mitering all skybox sides to make sure they fit tightly together.
2) Don’t let entities pass into the skybox or even worse case though the skybox.

Also remember that skyboxes don’t have to be square or rectangle in shape. Depending on how you map is designed it could consist of several square or rectangle areas that are all tightly mated together.

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