SKY
See also: Level Design - Light - Textures - Terrain -
Updated May 15, 2002 - 9:42 PM

Sky Texture -- making skies in Half-Life --

Apply "sky" texture to the entire brush. All faces must have the "sky" texture for the sky effect to work. (See Textures.)

You can have as many sky brushes as you like (within the limits of engine load and good taste).

Sky textures require the presence of a light_environment entity in order to simulate sunlight. Doesn't matter where you place it -- the light_environment entity properties do the work.

Set the map properties: in WorldCraft or Hammer:

Select Map, then Map Properties.

Go to the environment map (cl_skyname) attribute, and type in one of the available sky types:

2desert	black	dusk	neb6	xen10
alien1	city	morning	neb7	xen9
alien2	cliff	neb1	night	xen 8
alien3	desert	neb2	space

For editors and custom images, see Environment Maps.

Sky Tutorials

• Sky - by Brian
• Sky by WaveLength
• Troubleshooting: Disappearing Brushes -

Environment Maps

The Environment Map is the image that is displayed on sky brushes. It's constructed from six square images, tiled together like an unfolded box.

Downloadable Sky Maps

• Wadfather -

Editors

• Terragen - scenery rendering software

Tutorials

• How to Use Environment Maps -

Making Environment Maps

"Get a pak explorer. Then open the gfx folder in the pak, and in their open env. All of valves skies are in here. You will see that each sky has six 8bit bmp.....and 6 24bit tga files. Also, each of these 12 files must be 256x256 pixels and you must make each file either 8bit or 24bit appropriately.

"Mimic the Valve format to the T. You will notice that each of the twelve files is named in a certain way, like nightb, nightc, nightd........this isn't really how it is, like i said look in the pak file. You can obviously see the common word NIGHT....that would be the name of the sky as you would define it in the map properties.

"Finally, once you have your twelve sky drawings in the proper format, simply use pak explorer to make a new empty pak. name it pak1.pak create a folder called gfx, and in their make one called env (just like in valves pak0.pak). Now stick your 12 drawings in there. If they are in the correct color bittage and file type and size (256x256) it should work. Just enter the name in the map properties, oh and put the pak1.pak in your valve directory."

-- anonymous Internet post