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Xanthier

Methods for creating a sky

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I notice that alot of the skies look the same as far resolution and style, my question is how do you go about making a custom sky, do people take pictures and then reformat, or do google search, what are the steps?

I'm not in a hurry to create a custom sky but I am curious because I may want to someday.

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I start off by finding a photograph of a sky that goes well with the doom palette, then applying motion blur horizontally (by a decent amount), then I'll run it through the doom palette fixing any artifacts. Finally, I'll copy the entire image, move it over about halfway, paste a copy on the other side (so I can see how it will tile), then I'll go into photoshop and smudge it so it blends together.
Sometimes if the colors are too smooth (and consequently dont look good enough in Doom), I'll apply some monochromatic noise.
I have only one surviving sample, but it's not as good as some of the ones I lost :(



Btw, I went through the trouble a while back to create tall versions of all the Doom and Doom II skies. I cannot stress enough that I did these ALL MYSELF from using stock Doom and Doom II textures. You are free to use any of them as long as I'm given some sort of credit.

Doom:


Doom II:

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EarthQuake, I really like what you've done with the DooM and DooM2 skies. I had made the E1 sky into a 240 high texture, but instead of adding more sky, as you have done, I added more valleys.

Everybody who uses ZDooM or other source ports that support tall skies should use the skies you've done.

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ReX said:

Everybody who uses ZDooM or other source ports that support tall skies should use the skies you've done.


They're already in Skulltag, so if you see these there, then you know who's behind em ;)

Thank you for your words though.

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You could download the JDoom Environment Pack and take the very high quality skies from there and use them I would think if it is allowed, I'm not sure.

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EarthQuake said:

They're already in Skulltag, so if you see these there, then you know who's behind em ;)

Thank you for your words though.

Yeah, these skies are totally bitchin'! :D The two that are being used in ST 96 (the E3 and E4 skies) work perfectly! If it's alright with you, I'd like to add the rest to ST 97 (I would of course credit you! Hell, I'll build you a shrine! :D ). I think the E2 and first Doom 2 could really come in handy :)

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Carnevil said:

Yeah, these skies are totally bitchin'! :D The two that are being used in ST 96 (the E3 and E4 skies) work perfectly! If it's alright with you, I'd like to add the rest to ST 97 (I would of course credit you! Hell, I'll build you a shrine! :D ). I think the E2 and first Doom 2 could really come in handy :)

Yes, you are certainly welcome to use any of them you like. I created them for the public.

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I have made a few skies, but they aren't ready for public consumption just yet (please email me if you want to use them, I may have reservations).


Here is the 1024 wide wrap around version |clicky|









..and of course

which I am using on that WIP project.. heh.


I make more as I see fit usually.

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I personally like the second and fifth sky. There's just something about rugged, barren terrain like that that greatly adds atmosphere to a map.

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that third one is great. looks like something that ought to be floating over a ruined earth... *ideas*

anybody think it might be a good idea to create a site dedicated to Doom sky textures? i know every sky you could ever want is in some wad somewhere, but it might be cool to have a library of good ones.

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A good way to stretch skies without making it obvious that they are stretched is to convert to 24-bit images first. With a 256 color image, the only resizing option im most paint/manipulation progs is a pixel resize, which doesn't look so hot.

Once it is a 24-bit .bmp you can resize with other algorithms like bilinear interpolation. This uses more colors, and you'll lose them when you convert back to the Doom palette, but it makes a much nicer image.

This works really well also for textures, sprites, and any other Doom graphic that needs to be resized.

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I have a vaguely related question. I'll soon be spending a few weeks in New Zealand, and will have plenty of opportunities to take photos of landscape scenes with snow-topped mountains, lakes, etc. I'd be happy to make these available to anyone who wanted to convert them into Doom skies. In this case, what would make the photos most suitable - how wide an angle, how much sky relative to mountains, that kind of thing?

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Grazza said:

I have a vaguely related question. I'll soon be spending a few weeks in New Zealand, and will have plenty of opportunities to take photos of landscape scenes with snow-topped mountains, lakes, etc. I'd be happy to make these available to anyone who wanted to convert them into Doom skies. In this case, what would make the photos most suitable - how wide an angle, how much sky relative to mountains, that kind of thing?


I think that you could use just about any variable possible for taking pictures, and they'd be sure to impress most people anyways.

Iori, those skies are awesome. Is there any way you could release slightly larger versions of them for desktop wallpapers? :)

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Grazza said:

In this case, what would make the photos most suitable - how wide an angle, how much sky relative to mountains, that kind of thing?

i image you could just take a bunch and the people who turn them into skies can worry about the rest.

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insertwackynamehere said:

....I've made a few combined also.

I really like the "moonscape" mountains. However, the image will not tile properly horizontally. Is there an easy way for you to fix it?

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Terragen is a the best tool. I used Bruce3D before, but sky rendering in it sucks. But in practice I use both Terragen and photography-based methods for creating skies. The last works best if you know how to do with an image-editing programs like Photopaint / Photoshop / PaintShopPro.

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MasterOfPuppets said:

that third one is great. looks like something that ought to be floating over a ruined earth... *ideas*

anybody think it might be a good idea to create a site dedicated to Doom sky textures? i know every sky you could ever want is in some wad somewhere, but it might be cool to have a library of good ones.


That REALLY isn't a bad idea at all, MasterOfPuppets. I love sky Textures. I always wondered what I would do for the doom community in terms of building a website, and this may just be it! Of course I'll have to post links to my DM wads on it too. heh.

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you do this, (collect all available sky texts) and I will love you. Not only that I just recently accumulated a ton of sky images off the web that I'm going to try and convert to sky textures, when I am successful, you can put them up there, I think we'll have a kick-ass collection.

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