I consider myself to be a very smart person, but I have gone through pretty much all of the tutorials on skyboxes and windows. It seems like they made the tutorials under the impression that you knew everything already.

I'm sure I'm not the only one so if it is not too much trouble, can some explain how to make a skybox and/or window IN ENGLISH PLEASE? Any help is appreciated.

Skybox coming up......

OK, its a lot easier than you would think.

1. Basically, a skybox is a view surrounding
your level in all directions that moves independently of brushes, so it looks like its in the far distance.

2. OK. Surround your level in a huge brush, this will have the sky and trees/whatever on it. Hollow it out.

3. Select all the brushes in your surrounding box by shift-clicking on each in turn. Open up the skies textures from the top menu.

4. IGNORE all the pictures of skies and stuff. Instead, select one of the little textures that has no picture, but is surrounded by a white box. This is the shader for the skybox. If you slect the one called "yavin" it will have trees around with a blue sky, if you select a different one it will look different again.

Hope that helped.

Ignore what he just said.

You don't have to do all that crap.

It's much simpler.

Make a 'ceiling' brush, thats right along the top of your walls. Texture it with the same texture he said. Bingo, skybox. Do NOT make the big box. It's a waste of oct tree.

wtf, if its an outside level then you would have no sides! it depends on the stlye of the level Walthers way for an outside skybox, your way for seeing sky, but are inside



------------------
Ah, an old bin and a roll of wire...
... I can make a time machine out of that

Hey guys, thanks for your help. I'm almost finished with my RotJ Throne Room duel map and I think people will be quite pleased as it will be very accurate.

So would I put sky brushes right outside of the windows to see the stars through the windows? Or should I just put a big square brush around my level since it will basically be a "box" type level? And how do I make those circle windows from the Throne Room transparent?

Until I figure this out I can't proceed. Thanks again for the input.

[This message has been edited by SlowbieOne (edited May 19, 2002).]

Just build your map as you would in say, JED. You dont need to enclose your whole map in a huge box, and unless thats a part of the maps design, I wouldnt recommend doing that as this type of map takes much longer to compile unless you make everything within the box detail. Eg, for a window, make the window frame as normal and apply the sky shader to the 'glass' of the window. Same with skies. Hope that clears it up for you.

Boxes bad.

As for the windows; use the ones already in the game. They are transparent. For that matter, theres a throne room in the deathstar level.

Sorry, I used the box method due to the fact that my map has windows that allows you to see 360 degrees round. Compile times are about 70 seconds.

Well, I tried a few things and just making a brush around the whole level, since the level is fairly small, and making that a skybox works fairly well and only takes about a minute or 2 to compile. So I finally know how to make a skybox, yay.

However, I used the Throne Room window texture in the "cairn" texture group, but I received a HOM (hall of mirrors) effect.

Here's what I've tried so far. I applied a NO_DRAW shader to all sides of the window brush, then applied the window texture to both sides of the window. Then I tried NO_DRAW solid, but recieved the same effect. I have a feeling it has something to do with NO-DRAW, but am I placing the shaders or textures on the wrong sides of the brush or something? Basically I need to know how to make the window transparent so I can see the skybox, but make it solid at the same time.

This is the last question about this, I promise.

bump...sorry guys, but I'm dying to know the answer.

Texture the entire brush with caulk, except one window surface. Then right-click it and make it a detail.

Ugh, I used caulk on all sides of my brush except 1, place the window texture on that 1 side, selected Make Detail, and nothing happened. What did I do wrong?

Sigh, I just wanna make my window transparent and it's taking me 3 days to figure out, this is getting ridiculous.

Can someone PLEASE give me a DETAILED description on how to make the circular "Throne Room" windows transparent?

Nothing will happen in the editor if you do what I said. Are you certain there is something behind it to see through it? If you did what I said, and it didn't work, then something is wrong with the shader.

Well, JM, I'm making a Throne Room and I'm using the circular windows, and outside of the window is my skybox, but when I load my map all I see is HOM. Does it matter which surface I don't caulk? When you say right click and make detail, you do mean right click the grid while the brush is selected right?

If you still require help, I have a tutorial on skyboxes which is quite thorough with screenshots included and is very beginner-friendly...
You will find it at my website, JK2 Mapping at:

http://www.geocities.com/jk2mapping/

Kayron James Mercieca - JK2 Mapping

Thanks 007, but I figured out skyboxes. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to make windows if my life depended on it.

It shouldn't. The window texture should be double-sided.

And yes, the grid.

Nice, that worked JM.I got it to work finally. You guys have been very helpful and im truly grateful. Hope to give you a good map to play in return.