Sniper's Paradise!
Skybox
Learning to make a sky box is essential to making great looking maps. A sky box is merely an area where you make your sky/outdoor decoration and then add SkyZoneInfo. The SkyZoneInfo acts as sort of a camera and is displays your skybox on ceilings/walls in your map where you set the surface properties to "fake backdrop."
Basics
To get started, create a room 512x512x512. Now load a standard Unreal texture called GenEarth. Texture the floor/ground with a grass or dirt texture. Don't worry about texturing the walls and ceiling, we will be setting the surface proprties to "fakebackdrop". Add a PlayerStart to the room wherever you want. Now, make another room the same size off to the side, away from the room you just built. This will be our SkyBox.
Inside the skybox add a box 256 x 256 x 128 to the center of the floor.
Now load the SkyBox textures. In your skybox add a cloudy texture to all walls, floor and ceiling. Now select all the surfaces of the box we added to the middle of the room and change it's texture to the ground (GRD) texture. Your skybox should look like this now:
If you look at the textures in the skybox package (the ones like LND1 LND2 etc...) you will notice they look like mountains but with a black background. These are masked textures that we will be using for the sides of our sky box. Make sure no textures are selected and then right click the sheet tool to bring up the sheet properties. Set the properties to X wall, U:256 V:128 like below:
Build the sheet then choose one of the LND textures (I used LND2_1) making sure no other surface is selected. Position the sheet like below:
Now, select the "Add Special" tool and open it's properties. Set the properties to Masked Wall and make sure Masked, 2-sided and Semi-Solid are selected. Click the Add Special button.
Now rotate the sheet 90 degrees and move it to the next position clockwise. Select the next texture (LND2_1b).
Add special again, and then rotate the sheet again and choose the next texture and add. Keep doing this until you have all four "walls" added around the "box" we set in the center.
Now, we need to tell Unreal which box is the sky. Go on over to the Actor Browser. Now, choose Info>ZoneInfo>SkyZoneInfo and place it in the sky box. The SkyZoneInfo will act as the camera so the "displayed" sky will be set to the surfaces we set to "Fake Backdrop" Place it in the Skybox as shown below:
Let's add some clouds to the skybox. We do this by selecting sheet properties and setting the size to U:512 V:512, then selecting Floor/Ceiling orientation in the sheet properties. Place the sheet just above the masked mountains we just added to the skybox:
Select the cloud texture and add special brush, choose transparent Window in the predefined drop down box. Also be sure to make sure 2-Sided is selected before adding the brush. Once you add the sheet, right-click the cloud texture and select u-pan or v-pan effect, the clouds will move. You can set the speed of the clouds in the skyzoneinfo.
We will need to add lighting. Since the skybox is small we are only going to add one light, set near the ground, leaving the lighting set to the default properties.
Now, move back to our first room. We need to set the "Surface Properties" in order for the skybox to work. What this does is tell Unreal that this is the surface that we want to display the skybox. Select every surface EXCEPT for the floor and right click to bring up surface properties. Now another box will pop up. From that box, select the "Effects" tab, and check "Fake Backdrop."
Now add a light to this room, rebuild and test run the map. You just built your first skybox!
Tips
You might have noticed first off that there was a visible line between the cloud sheet and the walls of the sky box. You can fix this by making the skybox room and cloud sheet larger so that the cloud sheet stretches well past the SkyZone info and the edges are hidden behind the mountain walls in the sky box.
The panning speed of the clouds is notably very fast. You can control this speed in the SkyBoxInfo under ZoneLight, by changing the TexUpanSpeed and TexVpanSpeed. The smaller the number the slower it pans. Try .5 or .3 for a good speed.
Ambient lighting can be set in the Skybox. This won't affect the lighting in the "world" just the brightness and color of the sky. NEVER give lighting dynamic properties or corona's (len's flares) in your skybox. This will slow the map down considerably!
You can add other sheets, like planets, moons, stars or nebula's in the skybox. Be sure they are set above the cloud sheet and that their surface properties are set to masked or transparent.
Play around with different things in the sky box (lighting, texture panning, etc...) and see what you can come up with. You should have the knowledge to build some really cool skies now.
Notes:
In the Unreal Levels you will often notice two sky boxes. You can only have ONE sky box per level. They used two sky boxes in Unreal because they had one for hi-resolution and one for low-resolution.
Author -Wolf
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