3d Sky

[extol]

Hi. I have a 3d game that operates sort of like World Of Warcraft. You move
your character and the camera follows. I already have mountainous terrain (a
plain with a displace modifier that I made in 3ds Max), but the sky is just the
background color of my 3d Member. Are there any tutorials to making a 3d sky
that I can add to this (clouds, stars, etc)? Would I be able to add a skybox
and keep my existing terrain? Thanks for any help on this!

[Ex Malterra]

i'm not familiar with world of warcraft (yeah i've been under a rock), so i'm
not sure what exactly you're going for. but i started a
[url]http://www.atlanticnetltd.com/x/toiboit/[/url] thing awhile ago that needed a sky
that moved with the sub. i used a cylinder primative with no end caps and a sky
texture on it. this was fine for me since the camera stays parallel to the xz
plane. if you need to allow for the camera looking up you could use a sphere
primative with startAngle 0, endAngle 180, rotate z - 90, facing #back and
radius whatever is large enough to get the look you want. you just need to
script whatever sky you use to move but not rotate with whatever your point of
reference is... in my case the sub. terrain won't be an issue, your sky will go
right through it. you may want to have a light fog, may add a realistic look
and mask the sky going through the terrain.

[popgodabubble]

Hi there are 3 main methods as far as I can tell for doing skyboxes 2 of which
use undocumented lingo.

1. #XXX_nodepth()
2. nextCamera()
3. addCamera()

A good basic tutorial for a type 1 skybox was written by barry swan a few
years back and can be found here: [url]http://www.inludo.com/tuts/skybox01.htm[/url]

The addCamera system (3) is initialy detailed by at dirGames-L:
[url]http://nuttybar.drama.uga.edu/pipermail/dirgames-l/2005-February/033767.html[/url]
One thing ben did forget is that you need to set your camera rects to be equal.

If you would like to cater for 3D elments within the skybox itself using a
nextCamera / add camera system is more suitable. With both you can your sky set
in a seperate 3d member as a bonus, if needed. Also you can use these systems
to float an additional layer for overlays etc

sorry cant track down a link at moment for type 2 and too biz at moment to
search my archives.

hope this is of some help, pop