Skydome Materials

[Schmitzenbergh]

After looking through the content browser I couldn't find a Skydome material that pleased me so I went on an adventure on the local interwebs in search of nice sky textures!

But now comes the hard part, I can't figure out how to get it to fit on a Skydome mesh...

I've searched far and low and found the following:

The texture must be seamless and have a decent size like 2048x512

You must apply the Photoshop "Polar Coordinates" filter to get the texture to fit in the dome

OR

The texture must be square and formed as a sphere, like this:

I tried both ways but can't get the texture to wrap nicely on the dome. It always looks like it went through a mixer and barfed out.

Can someone point me in the right directions on how to create custom skydome materials?

PS: Yes I've made a material from the texture2D.

[Ruud033]

Well it depends on the mesh what kind of resolution you're using.

If you're using half a sphere you have to use like 2048x2048 or 1024x1024.. something in that range.

If you're using a whole sphere you also have to use something similair.

If you're using more of a banded kind of mesh, you can use a tailor-made texture that's like 2048x512.. I'd avoid this at all times unless you're having a really complicated sky dome!

So, to wrap things up, I think you're better off doing the stuff in photoshop, because when you apply a polar coordinates node thing in the shader, you only add more performance issues. If you just load up a texture it has much less impact on the performance.

So I think it's kind of strange that you didnt succeed yet in implementing the texture.

What if you take an existing shader and just try to change the material in there? Maybe the one from Mesa_II ?

If you look at that texture, isn't there something you can learn from that texture?

[Schmitzenbergh]

I'll try my findings on the mesaII texture.

I did do all the texture work in PhotoShop, I only imported and applied the material to the mesh.

I'll try and make some images and tell more in detail what I did. I'll post it tomorrow or so. I probably missed something stupid.

On a side note: Im a real train wreck when it comes to materials and material instance constants. I can't wrap my head around them. I'm gonna follow the master texture tutorial you've posted , but do you know a clear tutorial that explains materials and material instance constants well? I followed Kenz's tutorials but I couldn't get it for the full 100%. (not kenz's fault ), and a lot of the tutorials are waaaay to hard...

[Ruud033]

The master material tutorial is for optimizing the level as a whole, I think the skybox will fall out of your master material (as mine also does, I have a seperate material for my skybox as the shader is very specific)

If you need help wrapping your head around materials, go youtube that shit! A couple of good examples are:

Pro tip: UDK calls shaders 'materials', however, they're not actually materials, they're shaders.

A material instant constant is a material (a MIC does require a draw call to display when you look at it)

[Handepsilon]

You can create MIC from the procedural sky sphere material used on default template. Just adjust those sliders and colors and you *might* get the material you want

[Schmitzenbergh]

I figured it out. The material was fine, it was the dome that wasn't correct. My sky is now placed correctly

Thx for the tutorials, I will watch them.