[WIP] High quality skyboxes

[Salk 374]

I surely like the first one better.

The reason, in my case, is simply that I find the color choice to be more appropriate.

On top of that, it is closer to the original color of the vanilla sky as well.

[Sith Holocron 2,478]

I agree with @KnifeMaster and @Salk. The first of your two options works better because you're not reinventing the wheel.

[Kexikus 995]

It's done. Malachor is now complete.

I went with the color closer to vanilla as you all suggested and also desaturated the dark clouds a little bit. In addition to that I tweaked the terrain color a little and also improved the terrain itself so that you can no longer see where it begins. Here's what the result looks like:

But since this is an animated skybox, pictures can't really do it justice and so here's a video for you all:

And as always, there's also a render of just the skybox. Well, two actually. And I have them in two versions. One is the raw Terragen render and one was edited in a similarly to the skybox textures to get darker clouds at the top.

    

Next up is the Unknown World, but that's mostly fixing the skybox model for all modules and rerendering the skybox itself with some tiny tweaks. I'll keep you updated.

[DarthParametric 3,785]

Seems like the corners of the skybox model are pretty noticeable.

[Kexikus 995]

4 minutes ago, DarthParametric said:

Seems like the corners of the skybox model are pretty noticeable.

That's not the model, that's the render. The problem here is that each render is illuminated individually and sometimes, especially in scenes with thick clouds, that illumination will not match.

But that's easily fixed by using a so called "global illumination cache" in TG. I'm just too lazy to do that for my test renders as that takes extra time. But in the final version these corners won't be visible at all (and the resolution will be higher and there will be less grain).

[Salk 374]

Impressive!

Thanks for the update, Kexikus. 

I am looking forward to see what the Unknown World skybox will look like.

A question: will there be an animated skybox also for K1?

Cheers!

[KnifeMaster 33]

10/10, the animation looks even better than I expected. @Salk An animated K1 skybox sounds neat in theory, but I'm not sure it would fit stylistically with any of the stock worlds. Maybe it could work on Korriban or the Unknown World?

Edited May 20, 2019 by KnifeMaster

[Kexikus 995]

3 hours ago, Salk said:

A question: will there be an animated skybox also for K1?

Cheers!

I don't think so. The only animation I can do is a rotation like the one for Malachor and that only works for very cloudy skies as you'd otherwise get weird lighting on the clouds. And even then you usually have clouds moving in one direction and not rotating around a single point, i.e. an animation like that wouldn't work for the Telos Polar Plateau either even though that one is just as cloudy. And K1 doesn't even have something like that.

[Kexikus 995]

And another skybox is done (well, actually two). As I said before it's the Unknown World:

That screenshot is actually a little older though. I've since tweaked the colors a little to reduce that horrible sun glare. Apart from that the skybox is almost exactly the same as in V1. The only difference is the moon texture which I replaced with a texture from here so that it's no longer our moon you see in this alien sky.

And as always, there's also two renders and unlike my other renders, I moved the camera quite a bit for these to get a more interesting foreground. But since those islands are usually only seen in the very far distance they're of course not that great looking. Better than no foreground though

But as I said in the beginning, there's another skybox and that's the sunset version of the Unknown World used in the revelation and DS ending cutscenes. That one uses the same terrain of course but I remade the sky from scratch to get closer to its vanilla look. For comparison here's the very unnatural looking V1 of that skybox.

The new one is just waaaay better:

It's still a little cheated and not entirely realistic but it helps setting the tone of those two scenes. I even had a version with a sky that was much more red just like the vanilla sky but that was just too unrealistic for my taste. Anyway, here's the corresponding render:

Those two were close to the last vanilla skyboxes for K1. The only one left now is Kashyyyk and some tweaks to Tatooine and Manaan. And afterwards there are of course still the mod skyboxes to do.

TSL is also coming along very nicely with only two vanilla planets remaining, namely Nar Shaddaa and Dxun. I started working on some building models for Nar Shaddaa and I have to say that this is probably the least fun thing I've done for these skyboxes yet... 😅 But we'll see how it goes. I'll keep you updated.

[DarthParametric 3,785]

Saucy. Makes me want to port some of TOR's Lehon props and textures, as I think that is some of the best looking stuff they ever did.

[HK-47 84]

*in tears* OH MY GOSH! IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL!

[KnifeMaster 33]

The islands on Lehon are a great addition. The DS ending skybox looks great, too - my only problem is that your render looks better than what actually ends up in game 😄 the render itself looks darker and more ominous, which (I think) has to do with that particular module's lighting. Would you consider tweaking the area lighting, or would you prefer to keep that stock @Kexikus?

[VarsityPuppet 1,085]

@Kexikus Always great work! How long until another release?

[Kexikus 995]

On 6/12/2019 at 1:09 AM, KnifeMaster said:

The islands on Lehon are a great addition. The DS ending skybox looks great, too - my only problem is that your render looks better than what actually ends up in game 😄 the render itself looks darker and more ominous, which (I think) has to do with that particular module's lighting. Would you consider tweaking the area lighting, or would you prefer to keep that stock @Kexikus?

Thanks for the suggestion. I don't want to change the ingame lighting too much but I'll see if I can tweak it a little for a better look.

On 6/16/2019 at 3:42 AM, VarsityPuppet said:

@Kexikus Always great work! How long until another release?

You should know the answer to that type of question, right?

 

Currently work is still underway for the Nar Shaddaa buildings. I aim to create five different buildings based on those seen in the cutscenes. The first one is done, the second is in progress as seen here:

[Sith Holocron 2,478]

35 minutes ago, Kexikus said:

Currently work is still underway for the Nar Shaddaa buildings. I aim to create five different buildings based on those seen in the cutscenes. The first one is done, the second is in progress as seen here:

Having those buildings available to movie makers could eventually lead to folks redoing the Nar Shaddaa landing and take off movies so I particularly enjoy this one.

[Canderis 180]

Those are some cool looking lightsabers!

[Kexikus 995]

18 hours ago, Sith Holocron said:

Having those buildings available to movie makers could eventually lead to folks redoing the Nar Shaddaa landing and take off movies so I particularly enjoy this one.

If anyone wants to use them for that you're very welcome.

[Zhaboka 91]

My GOD this work remains gorgeous as ever. Keeping that Lehon sunset as a wallpaper

And Malachor looks creeeeeeeepyyyyyy! As it should.

[Salk 374]

Hello Kexikus!

I was wondering: have you planned to release the skyboxes for the original games before completing the skyboxes for third party modifications or will you rather have everything 100% ready before a new public release?

And another question: you started work on V2 already four years ago. Has Terragen seen any notable improvement since then or is it basically still the same v4 you started with?

Cheers!

[Kexikus 995]

7 minutes ago, Salk said:

Hello Kexikus!

I was wondering: have you planned to release the skyboxes for the original games before completing the skyboxes for third party modifications or will you rather have everything 100% ready before a new public release?

And another question: you started work on V2 already four years ago. Has Terragen seen any notable improvement since then or is it basically still the same v4 you started with?

Cheers!

I think I'll start rendering the vanilla skyboxes once they're all done and while that's in progress I will work on the third party skyboxes (which are not that many so it shouldn't take too long I hope). Then I'll see how far I got with those once the vanilla renders are all done.

Actually it's been only about 2.5 years since I started with V2. Terragens v4 came out a few months earlier and while it has seen some improvements since that major release, there are no big new features or anything like that. At least none that I know of.

 

Also, while I'm here: I'm not dead and work on those Nar Shaddaa buildings is continuing very slowly. My focus in the last months simply was on other personal projects and my masters thesis. That might/should change in a few weeks however.

 

[Kexikus 995]

Four months later and I finally finished the Nar Shaddaa buildings:

Next up is getting them into Terragen to create the cityscape. I might add some floating building like the casino from SWTOR further down the line but for now these five should suffice for my skybox needs.

[superSzym 155]

Wow, these buildings feel so Nar Shaddaa. Nonetheless, TSL still depicts it in a too clean way. Since making it as red as on SWTOR would be top invasive, is there at least a chance that background lights, banners and reddish fog will make it feel more like these?

[Kexikus 995]

While I agree that TSLs Nar Shaddaa is way too clean, this is not something that I'll be able to fix with just a new skybox. That would also require extensive edits to at least the lighting of all areas and ideally also changes and additions to textures and props. But if someone were to do such an overhaul for Nar Shaddaa, I'd gladly provide a matching skybox.

I might add some additional neon advertisement to my skybox if that doesn't feel too out of place compared to the actual areas but that remains to be seen. For now I try to stick to the vanilla look.

[Malkior 476]

13 hours ago, Kexikus said:

While I agree that TSLs Nar Shaddaa is way too clean, this is not something that I'll be able to fix with just a new skybox. That would also require extensive edits to at least the lighting of all areas and ideally also changes and additions to textures and props. But if someone were to do such an overhaul for Nar Shaddaa, I'd gladly provide a matching skybox.

I might add some additional neon advertisement to my skybox if that doesn't feel too out of place compared to the actual areas but that remains to be seen. For now I try to stick to the vanilla look.

Hmm.. I have been editing a lot of lightmaps lately; not that I'm volunteering per se but creating that look would be fairly easy once it was determined which lightmap affected which object and which D-Light needed to be changed.

[Kexikus 995]

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.