what exactly is a skybox and how do you make one in JK

It's a big sector that goes around your level with sky/horizon textures on them.

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how do i make one for my level? is there any cogging to it, also are there any tuturials here on them?

Hi.

Skyboxes are not (normally) supported by JK. If you want to get the effect of a good skybox, you've got to plan this from the very first step when building your level. Adding one afterwards will in most cases not work.
You should probably check if it is not easier to use a "normal" JK sky in your case.

Short description how to build a skybox from scratch:
- new level
- resize sector to 4x4 grid dots.
- put skybox-textures on the walls (downloaded from the "Wadfather", http://wadfather.game-edit.com , for example)
- skale up the sector about 40-80times.
- find a way of getting rid of the anti-aliasing lines JK makes for no apparent reason
- put your level in the exact middle (see? difficult to implement afterwards)

There's also a "pre-built" skybox somewhere on Massassi. Check the download-section.

Cheers,
Goofz

So, hwat exactly is the benifit of having a skybox? It would seem that having 'normal sky' would be much easier and cause less problems. I assume that a normal sky is just sky textures on the sectors that would need it?

gumbo

Hi.

gumbo: "Normal" skies are the two different kinds of sky JK supports: Horizon sky and "top" sky (or whatever that's called). That's the type that is used in all the LEC levels.
Skyboxes have greater possibilites, but are much harder to use. Example:


Cheers,
Goofz

If it isn't totally clear yet, a skybox is a panorama. A 360 degree, up and down picture of a landscape, spacescape etc. They can look great if used right.

When is somebody going to do a tutorial?

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damn goofz thats a nice screenshot, anyways i'm still not certain about how to make a skybox. If someone could make a tuturial that would be cool.

I really don't know if it could be made in JK but anyways...

A "real" skybox is basically a cube with sky/space/blah textures on all 6 surfaces. You place a camera in it looking at a certain angle, and whenever you need to do a window in a level, you take the the window surface and use it as a "tv screen" of sorts, that basically just shows you what the camera in the skybox sees. Why go thru all this trouble when you can simply flag your window surface as "sky" you may ask? well the particular advantage of a skybox, beside offering a 360 degree sky/horizon/floor its that you can put things in the skybox and thus get a parralax scrolling in your windows. For example, lets say you make a level that as a large window on the ceiling looking into space. A simple "star" texture flagged as 'sky' would look nice but let's say that you wanted to see a moon/planet from that window too... You could use a texture that has a moon painted over a starfield of course, but such things lack realism. What do you do then? Use a skybox, you creat a huge cube outside of your level's playable areas, put starfield textures on all 6 surfaces, and insert a sphere-like object in the middle textured as a planet. You then place a camera in that skybox, link its point of view to all the surfaces looking skyward in your level and voila.. the moon actually appears as a separate entity from the starfield and gives a much more acute sense of realism due to the parralax it creates. And you could also insert objects, such as spaceships that revolve around the planet and it would look that much cooler

There you go, Skybox 101 for you