My custom Skybox

I drawed myself a custom texture that hopefully tiles. I want it on all cubesides as a skybox.

I saved the 6 512x512 images as TGA and then renamed them to *.vtf.

When i start my compile it says that its unable to load my sky.

I can see it in hammer in the texture list, but not the image, its just black and purple squares as if the images arent working. What could be wrong?

I followed this tutorial:

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Skybox

thanks

---

I know you like good music. Go to http://peak.sorkmos.com/PEAK/ and start DL. now.

CONVERT the TGA images to VTF (this will create a $SKYNAME.txt which you will later edit then rename to $SKYNAME.vmt)

search the wiki for "VTEX"

hehe, oops.

Will my skybox be stuffed in my bsp file? Or do I have to fix that myself somehow?

---

I know you like good music. Go to http://peak.sorkmos.com/PEAK/ and start DL. now.

Use Pakrat for that. Google it.

Thanks alot. Im having a little problem when I use Vtex though. When i try to convert the TGA it says: "Problem figuring out outputdir for c:/steamblabla/the tgafile." and i get no vtf file.

I cant find the reason why it does that.

---

I know you like good music. Go to http://peak.sorkmos.com/PEAK/ and start DL. now.

i had somewhat the same problem, you put ur tga file into this file for css

C:\ProgramFiles\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\username\sourcesdk_content

\cstrike\materialsrc

and in this one for hl2 mp

C:\ProgramFiles\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\username\sourcesdk_content\

hl2mp\materialsrc

they will figure them selves to go into either ur

C:\Program Files\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\username\counter-strike source\cstrike\materials

or

C:\Program Files\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\username\half-life 2 deathmatch\hl2mp\materials

Thanks, that worked. But now i got antother error. It says that the texture must be the power of 2. My texture is 512x512, and is that not the power of 2? Still get no VTF, but atleast i get my txt file =). progress!

---

I know you like good music. Go to http://peak.sorkmos.com/PEAK/ and start DL. now.

Having a headache with this subject(I did try and post this seperately but had no joy)

I have some sky textures already in .tga format.I droppped them into vtex.exe and it said :



'skybox' detected. Treating skybox like a cubemap for edge-matching purposes.

implicity [sic] disabling nice filtering



So this left me to make a .vmt for the vtf`s.

I put :


"UnlitGeneric"

{

"$basetexture" "skybox/INSERTED TEXTURE HERE"

"$nofog" "1"

}

in the text file and did this for all my .tga`s.

Vtex put the vtf`s in my materials folder,so i placed all of them along with the .vmt`s in a folder called skybox.

Now when i try and run the sky texture hammer says it cant find it.The
tga`s are in the materialsrc folder along with a text file to tell vtex
that they are sky textures.

I followed a tut from http://www.editlife.net/tutorials.php?id=25

to the letter and have even done it twice to make sure i wasnt missing anything.

I have made custom textures before but this is baffling me.

Any help is much appreciated as i just cant see where i am going wrong.

it looks to me like you should be replacing "INSERTED TEXTURE HERE" with whatever name you used for your env map (sky).

---

i eat paint

Fishy, yes i did put the texture file name in the space provided sorry if it seemed like i was being a bit dim.

"UnlitGeneric"

{

"$basetexture" "skybox/sky_approach_rt"

"$nofog" "1"

}

Is what i have put.

I don't follow any of these threads. It's so upsetting. tear

Right,have tried Valves site for inspiration and we are no further
forward.The error is not that it can find it but that it cant load the
file.

So after many hours moving files around i am going to leave it for
tonight.If anyone knows how to get this to work please let me know.

Cheers.

if you've named your six images as ;

skybox/sky_approach_up

<SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">skybox/sky_approach_dn</SPAN>

<SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">skybox/sky_approach_rt</SPAN></SPAN>

etc, then your vmt should look like;

"UnlitGeneric"
{
"$basetexture" "skybox/sky_approach_"
"$nofog" "1"
}

---

i eat paint

Thanks Fishy, i didnt quite grasp the naming of these files.Hubby sussed it lol

The .tga and .vmt dont like having the underscore so instead of
sky_approach_rt it prefers sky_approachrt. etc.So we now have a working
custom sky texture.

I do wish there was a tut on this as simple people like myself got all confused using the available ones.lol

Still not quite sure where hubby placed the folders but when i find out
exactly where i went wrong and he went right will let you know.

I also had the problem of vtex not liking me resizing tex`s from
256x256 to 512x512.With a little persuasion i am sure i will get there.