Quote from wrathofmobius on January 23, 2012, 6:16 pm

I've never worked with 3d skyboxes before, but it sounds like you could set the minimum light value on those brush faces to something higher. I believe it's a keyvalue on func_brush.

Quote from s_tones on January 23, 2012, 7:28 pm

thanks
I'll look at that.
On further experimentation it seems to be a general lighting issue with which I'm making some progress.

Quote from ChickenMobile on January 24, 2012, 3:46 am

The 3D skybox is a small room with its' own lighting. So practically you need to artificially light up the 3D skybox if your skybox texture does not physically emit light.

BIG TIP: Make the 3D skybox around your map in full-size with the sky_camera at 0 0 0 before you shrink the map to 1/16 of a size. This will make brushes magically match up to exactly where you want them. When you are done select all the brushes (including your sky_camera at 0 0 0 and use the scale tool (ctrl+m -> scale) to set the scale 0.0625 and then move into your small '3D sky box' outside the main map .

Also everything in the 3D skybox should either be models or func_details. It is unecessary to split leaves on brushes smaller than 3 units.

Quote from josepezdj on January 24, 2012, 8:15 am

Hi Steve:

I've been messing around with 3D skyboxes for quite some time as I want to include a few skybox ideas to my mappack. I would like to give you some tips for your consideration (if you are mapping for Portal2 of course... ):

1. The light_environment can be in both, the real map and the skybox mini-room (as you say, your "closed brush box"), BUT if you want it to work, don't forget to place at least one IN THE 3D SKYBOX ROOM. Also you would like to put an env_sun entity and a shadow_control entity too INTO THE SKYBOX ROOM. All of them (these 3 entities) should be pointing at the same point. This will make the light and the shadows head to the same place. (read this: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Template:Skybox_lighting)

2. Be carefull about where you place the 2D skybox textures in your map (that shows the content of your 3D skybox room) because they get messed up with portals!. Try to use the skybox preferrably where no portals can be open near them, otherwise your skyboxes textures will flicker/dissapear/appear/dim... etc. If portals have to be open in the chamber where you want the skybox to be shown, try to use the skybox textures mainly for the celining and the highest possible...

3. Very important: as you have made a 3D skybox room cube-shaped, all the 2D skybox textures you place in your map must follow any of the 6-sides orientation of your 3D-skybox room; meaning that if you place a 45? rotated brush in your map and you texture that brush with toolskybox, the skybox won't be shown... in any of the toolskybox textures in your map (you would screw it all up!).

4. In the case you want your skybox to be shown not only above, but also at some sides of one chamber and you want too use a custom skybox, there is a possibility that you notice the edges of the cube-shaped room... that's because the 6 sides image-files of the custom skybox are not well made. This is ugly... but easy to correct with VTFEdit though: if this is your case, I mean you're using a [u]custom /u] skybox and you're noticing those white thin edges of the box, pm me and I'll explain to you how to correct that.

5. If you want to add stuff into your 3D skybox, as chickenmobile said above, it's easier to do all the brush work in "real" size map first and then scale the whole thing 1/16 of the size (this is the particular scale that Portal2 uses... other games use a different one). There are many tutorials out there anyway that explains it in detail. There are stuff you can't place into the 3D skybox room though (read the VDC for knowing what is "allowed" and what's not). If you have textures you want to be scaled accordingly, make sure you have scaling texture lock enabled in the toolbar, otherwise the textures will look horrible: the details in huge size!

6. Normally, in the case that you use the toolsybox textures (2D skybox) in walls somehow into a chamber, and you build rooms around that first chamber, it will be possible to see these other roomsthrough the skybox textures. I recommend you use linked doors in order to separate the chambers trying to place them in different levels in height so they can never be seen if the player would look at the skybox textured brushes.

Those are some of the main tips I can firstly think of... there are some others I can let you know in the case you want to use the skybox in a more complex way... Feel free to ask me!

I hope that helps!

EDIT: of course, as you mentioned, it is VERY IMPORTANT that you place the 3D skybox room very far away from the main chambers and on diferent height levels so you can never see any of the chambers IF you were located into the 3D skybox room.

Quote from s_tones on January 26, 2012, 12:46 am

Tried to PM you Josepez but the messages seem to be stuck in the outbox despite returning "sent successfully" upon submission.

Lemme know if you got 'em OK?

Steve

Quote from baca25 on February 2, 2012, 7:11 am

Question... What are the disadvantages of a 3d skybox? I just put one in a map I'm working on, and so it made me think that there has got to be some bad things with this.
If I jam the skybox full of stuff, will that make the game run a lot worse?

Quote from josepezdj on February 2, 2012, 9:14 am

Hey baca25,

I guess the only disadventages of a 3D skybox for Portal2 are mainly 2:

1. Just try to place the portals and see the skybox through: it will not be stable, it will flicker, dim or even disappear.

2. At least in Portal2, with any single overlapping of brushes or too much of vertex tool, or any entity which is giving any kind of problem, the 3D skybox shown on the toolskybox texture will also flicker or be shown suddenly dimmed.

About the stuff you put into the skybox, don't worry about that, as normally the skybox is scaled (1/16), all the stuff into it will be so minuscule! You only have to take care about what you CAN / you CANNOT put into the 3D-skybox. To me, TopHattWaffle has the best tutorials about 3D-skybox. Check out:

http://www.tophattwaffle.com/?page_id=439

Btw, did you get that skybox you mentioned working out in your map? is it a custom one or one of Portal2's?

Quote from baca25 on February 2, 2012, 6:17 pm

I got my 3D-Skybox to work just fine. I just started to get carried away with putting stuff in it and didn't know if that was bad or not. I haven't tried to actually put in a custom skybox texture besides the portal 2 white skybox. Yet.