[TUTORIAL] Creating a SkyBox with Maya and Photoshop

[Noruen]

As I promised to obsidian several months ago, there is tutorial how I created my skybox used in Derwyll's Castle 2 map

I suppose in this tutorial, that everybody who own Maya has some expirience in using of this program and that’s why I skip here some basics like texture settings, basic modelling etc. Also I advocate for someone maybe wrong way of creating skyboxes – I’m creating skyboxes to be effective, not to be absolutely correctly modelled in good scales. Simply to get good results, everything else is secondary. In this tutorial I will work with Maya 2008, but in older and maybe newer versions it should be the same and Photoshop CS4.
First of all we need to create objects which will be lately rendered as skybox. In my skybox (for Derwyll’s Castle 2 – hidden advertisement ) i did it this way (see pictures):
Step 1: Creating the camera - setup of camera will be discussed later. I recommend to place the cammera right into the center of the scene (0 0 0).


Step 2: I have created mountains and textured them.


Step 3: Sky – the black gradient. This part is necessary to make soft gradient between moon surface and sky. It can be over-worked by fog effects etc.

Step 4: Sky – atmospheric gradient. Dou you remember the sky in evening during sunset, when sky on the horizon is colored like rainbow? This is there right because of it.

Step 5: Nebulas. Textures with incandescence to be independent on lights.


Step 6: „The darkness“. This is simply black plane to simulate fog-covered surface of the moon.


Step 7: Place lights.


Step 8: Cloud sphere.


Step 9: Planet wit its rings.


Step 10: „The universe“. Sphere with texture of MilkyWay.


This was about scene construction. Now how to render? It is all in camera setup. What is really important for correct rendering of all six picture sides of skybox is understanding of what one side is. Basically it represents 90° angle of “square” view. It is a basic assumption on which we rely in setting of camera in Maya.




So, logically we should set angle of view of camera to 90°. But it is only theory – my experience tells, that it is better to set 100° angle of view and then edit image in Photoshop by “crop” function relatively to 83,9% (tested), so also image should be rendered in bigger resolution than final resolution you plan (for example I render scene in 1536x1536 > crop > resize to 1024x1024). Why so weird angle? Because when you use some effects as “glow” or something like that, Maya add this effect to whole picture, but sides are darker, without effect influence. When you use bigger angle, effect will “overflow” to sides without darker edges (dark sides cut in Photoshop). So, that’s probably all. It is my first tutorial so something is maybe too little explained, or too much – please excuse it

Edit:


Final result

[Silicone_Milk]

Neat I'll have a closer look at this after work.

From the looks of it though, you should also include a shot of the final result, in-game

[obsidian]

Nice tutorial. It gives me the rough idea of what you are doing but it lacks some of the finer details. Would be nice to include some extra details, especially in steps 3 4 and 7.

3 and 4: how exactly do you set up a gradient? Why the funny half-torus? Couldn't you do the two gradients with just one?

7: What kind of settings do you put on the lights? Do they just affect the lighting of the mountains or do they light up the nebula texture as well?

Also, when rendering are you doing anything special? Do you just use a basic scanline renderer?

[Noruen]

3 and 4: These two weird cylinders are good in one thing. you can create simple gradient (for example from black to fully transparent black, or "rainbow") and then, you can edit gradient directly in maya. By stretching these cylinders alnog their "y - height" axis you can correlate how gradual it will be and thank to round edges it doesn't need to be linear. Yeah, it can be done also with simple cylinder, but this object is more jerk-resistant And reason why I don't use ramp texture, but textures form Ps is, that 1) I'm not so good in creating textures in Maya and B) Ps gives me more possibilities. Also I think it is faster.

And why two toruses? Because there are two gradients: 1) "rainbow" (refraction of light in atmosphere) and 2) "fog" from the deep (black). thank to two cylinders I can set up more precisely balance between them.

7: When I was creating this skyxbox I used only and only point lights with no special effects. So light comes from Orion nebula (that big) and from the sun. BUT there is one big cheat - that sun corona you see near the planet is not the same light which illuminate the planet. it is not-active light very near the camera. As I said - my goal is to made it good loking without care about scaling. an it works for static scenery.