[WIP] High quality skyboxes

[Salk 374]

I find it excellent, Kexikus!

Really good job there.

Truth to be told, I don't even mind the strong yellow for the windows...

[Jorak Uln 458]

On 10/30/2019 at 12:24 PM, Kexikus said:

Nar Shaddaa is coming together really well and much easier than I expected:

A few things to note here:

The 2D building backdrops in front of the skybox are still missing. And the windows are all way too yellow.

I might also tweak the building distribution a little as it's pretty obviously all the same building on the right. But I'll add the other buildings first as that might already hide this issue.

I really like the sky - excellent job done here!

About the model placement i'd love to see a bit more of the horizon - to make the scenery look bigger, maybe change the height of some front buildings and place some further away behind for that effect?

On the yellow windows i could get you some colored variants if you like; also that lights of the big front building look a bit outdated for todays visuals, just as a thought maybe its better to use different kind of windows for that one?

But all in all this is a major improvement and already no comparison to Sharen Thrawns old one.

[Kexikus 995]

On 10/31/2019 at 2:47 PM, Jorak Uln said:

I really like the sky - excellent job done here!

About the model placement i'd love to see a bit more of the horizon - to make the scenery look bigger, maybe change the height of some front buildings and place some further away behind for that effect?

On the yellow windows i could get you some colored variants if you like; also that lights of the big front building look a bit outdated for todays visuals, just as a thought maybe its better to use different kind of windows for that one?

But all in all this is a major improvement and already no comparison to Sharen Thrawns old one.

Thanks!

As to seeing more of the horizon. While I would like to see more of that myself, it just makes no sense here. This is the landing pad of the refugee quarter after all so it definitely won't be the highest building around. In fact I think that it would be even better if the surrounding buildings were higher than in my skybox but I decided to stay consistent with the prerendered cutscenes.

And yes, those buildings might look a bit outdated by today's standards but that's partially intentional (and partially my inability to create something better). But I really want to keep the style of the vanilla game and not make it into something it isn't. I'll leave the modernizing to you.

[Kexikus 995]

Nar Shaddaa is getting close to the finish line.

I fixed the skybox in all modules and added the foreground buildings.

On top of that I followed a suggestion by Jorak Uln to add some color variation to the windows of all buildings. The effect is intentionally pretty subtle but visible in this screenshot:

Now I just need to get rid of the bright outline around the foreground buildings and maybe tweak the distribution of the background buildings some more to get more variety in the buildings closest to the player.

[Spectrometer 16]

I really like the skybox itself but I don't like the lighting. I think I have grown accustomed to the shiny Thrawn's skybox, but yours look too dark, and, because of that, it has an "old" feeling IMO.

As I've said, I really like the models for the skyscrappers and their textures.

[Sith Holocron 2,478]

1 hour ago, Spectrometer said:

As I've said, I really like the models for the skycrappers

We used to call those pigeons and seagulls.

[Kexikus 995]

On 11/4/2019 at 8:40 PM, Spectrometer said:

I really like the skybox itself but I don't like the lighting. I think I have grown accustomed to the shiny Thrawn's skybox, but yours look too dark, and, because of that, it has an "old" feeling IMO.

As I've said, I really like the models for the skyscrappers and their textures.

Sorry for the late reply and thanks for the comment.

I can see your point but I actually think that Thrawn's skybox is just way too bright. The buildings in my skybox have pretty much the exact same color as the module buildings themselves. Making them any brighter would just create unnatural lighting.

But I'll let the skybox rest for a while and look at it again later. That should give me a new perspective and might convince me to make some changes.

[mackmitchell94 8]

Wow @Kexikus these are looking so nice, I can't wait til they're available !!!

[Kexikus 995]

First low quality test for the new Kashyyyk skybox:

Pretty happy with how this turned out. I still have an idea to add some more depth to the entire skybox but that will take some more work first.

The tree(s) in this skybox were modelled by myself and use leaf textures by Yughues.

I also worked some more on the Dxun skybox and got it pretty close to where I want it to be. I'll get you a screenshot once it's actually done.

[Kexikus 995]

And exactly one month later, Kashyyk is finally done.

If I had not decided to add some fancy shenanigans that would've taken much shorter but I like the result even though you can't really see much of the skybox.

And here's the entrance to the Wookiee village that you can actually see now (that's what was taking so long to get right).

And finally, the usual render of just the skybox:

Not sure what I'll work on next. The only big one still missing is Dxun and then there are some other skyboxes that still need little tweaks but I'm getting very close to actually finishing the vanilla skyboxes

[DarthParametric 3,783]

Nice. The vista walkways look better than the actual ones. Those are billboards? You should use the source models to make some replacements for the existing level meshes.

[Salk 374]

Congratulations, Kexikus!

I think you have done an excellent job with the Kashyyyk sky and the wait and effort was worth it.

Looking forward to have all the updated KotOR skies out to make a nice comparison with your older version.

Cheers!

[Kexikus 995]

29 minutes ago, DarthParametric said:

Nice. The vista walkways look better than the actual ones. Those are billboards? You should use the source models to make some replacements for the existing level meshes.

Yeah those are billboards created from the same models I used for the skybox.

Those have an unnecessary high poly count though so it wouldn't be quite as simple to use them ingame. Still something to think about though.

[DarthParametric 3,783]

That just means they are the high polys for baking out the low poly textures.

Of course the real problem with level models is never the geometry. That's the easy part. It's the generating new lightmaps that is the real killer.

[Kexikus 995]

Oh wow, it's been a while.

After Kashyyyk I went straight to work on the Dxun skybox and arrived at a result I liked pretty quickly. But then I saw the the landing/takeoff videos again and noticed that my terrain didn't match those videos at all. So I set off to fix that but never got any results that I liked. That killed my motivation pretty quickly until a few days ago when I finally had a breakthrough.

Dxun is now almost done but not quite ready to be shown yet.

I have a mockup version of another idea that was floating around in my head though:

The idea is obviously to have some sheet lightning on Telos. So far I only have this singular lightning that's reappearing again and again but I intend to add some more variety. Those take a long time to render though so that will still take a while. And I still need to complete the model as well. That shouldn't take long though.

Anyway, let me know what you think of this idea.

[DarthParametric 3,783]

Hrmm... I wonder how it would go if the skybox had scrolling UVs for a bit of cloud movement? That might require converting it into a single mesh though.

[Kexikus 995]

45 minutes ago, DarthParametric said:

Hrmm... I wonder how it would go if the skybox had scrolling UVs for a bit of cloud movement? That might require converting it into a single mesh though.

What exactly do you have in mind?

Unlike on Malachor I can't have a lot of cloud movement as the sunlight is coming from one specific direction, meaning that too much movement would create very unrealistic lighting.

[DarthParametric 3,783]

Ah, well yeah then that probably won't work then I guess. The only other way would be a second cloud dome using transparency. That could then move (or have scrolling UVs), with the rear/original skydome being static with just the sky and sun.

[Kexikus 995]

But even then, those clouds would have to be lit from a different side depending on the current orientation of the dome which is simply not possible with simple skyboxes.

[DarthParametric 3,783]

Not anything like what you can render out of Terragen, etc., no. I'm trying to think of a way you could render a moving cloud layer keeping the sun backlighting.

[Kexikus 995]

The only thing (except for animated textures) that I could think of are animated UVs that add some localized movement to the clouds but I imagine that getting this to look good would be very difficult.

[Salk 374]

I think the lightning idea is a nice one although I also think it would give the best result with animated clouds.

I played TSL only once some years ago so forgive me for asking but did you add the bird flock? If that is the case, I think it's very well done.

 

[Zhaboka 91]

I do agree moving clouds would look better, but if it's not possible, then sheet lightning would definitely be a welcome addition! Love that it accents Telos feeling unstable, newly healed, reborn, etc, etc.

[Kexikus 995]

And another one is done! It may not be the best render but here is Dxun:

The vegetation is very uniform and the mountains don't really look that great on a render like that but they work great when seen in the game. At some point I also had low clouds/haze in the valleys which looked pretty cool in a render such as that one but they didn't match the game look at all and took forever to render so I took them out again.

Anyway, here are some screenshots of what it looks like ingame:

I have one weird problem with my skybox model however:

These fire and smoke emitters in the distance are from another part of the level (crashed ship) and are usually not visible from the landing zone. However when I use my skybox model, they suddenly show up and I have no idea why. They are not part of this model and the skybox has the same size as the vanilla one so it's not like they were previously hidden behind the skybox geometry or something like that. I have not edited the vis file either. If anyone has any idea what might cause this, please let me know. I'll attach the ascii and compiled model to this post.

401dxnk.zip

Having finished the Dxun skybox leaves me with only one skybox to make: The secondary Dxun one. Apart from that I still want to experiment with the lightning and maybe cloud movement for Telos and I want to improve the Manaan underwater skybox model. And then there are some skyboxes that I still want to tweak a little (mainly Nar Shaddaa and Tatooine). Maybe some more will show up when I go through the levels again to check for any mistakes before starting the final renders. But I'm slowing reaching the finish line

[Jorak Uln 458]

cant see it clearly on the screen, but do you have rainfall included? Now, animated rain would be awesome😀