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3 Dimensional Chat / The Mysterious Sky Sphere

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Amadeus
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Joined: 20th Apr 2003
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Posted: 28th Apr 2003 16:20
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ok, I know it's allready questioned here, but I would appreciate it if someone could explain to me what exactlly must be done. The sphere loads fine, but I suppose it needs to be inverted to work correctly, and I think I might be inverting it correctly (flip normals in cart shop and then load into 3dcp for smoothing), but I think the distance renderer is also having a problem. Fog distance doesn't seem to affect this, until I need to place the FOG DISTANCE 10000 into my do:loop. I've read about TEXTURE BACKDROP, it says it's obselete in the manual and that a sky sphere is the better alternative. But there is no info anywhere about a sky sphere that I could find. I know I'm rambling alot. If you can abet my cause, I would be grateful.
Life is a tale told by an idoit, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. - MacBeth
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Beta1
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Posted: 28th Apr 2003 18:53
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The easiest way of making a sky sphere work is to turn the culling off (look under the SET OBJECT command). That then makes all the faces be drawn allowing you to see the sphere from inside. You can do this by flipping the normals but I always just turned off culling for that object. Once you have done that you can apply textures to the sphere and they should appear as normal. You dont need texture backdrop.

If your sky sphere is larger than the camera range it will not appear - you will just see the 3D backdrop. If its only just larger than the camera range you get some weird effects as the backdrop cuts through your sphere. To sort this out either decrease the size of your sphere or increase the camera range. You may also find the fog/and or light setting cause problems. In these cases you can turn off the sky's light and fog flags again using SET OBJECT. I find that turning both off gives the sky a nice bright look (when combined with a good texture).

I dont understand why you want to put FOG DISTANCE 100000 into your DO:LOOP. You only need to use the command once when you change the value. Using it every loop will cost you FPS.

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IanM
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Posted: 28th Apr 2003 20:08
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First switch your backdrop off - you don't need it when you're using a skysphere, and this will let your program run faster.

BACKDROP OFF

Next, create your sky sphere

MAKE OBJECT SPHERE 1,-2500.0

Note the negative size. This effectively creates the sphere inside-out.

Then texture it

Oh, and try and keep the sphere positioned at the same place as the camera
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BatVink
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Posted: 28th Apr 2003 20:38
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The important thing (for me anyway) is to position the skybox at the camera X,Y,Z. Then, you never reach it, and the fogging effect is consistent.

In theory, your skybox is massive, so the texturing would look pants close up. The perspective would also be all to cock if one side of the skybox was really close, and the other miles away.

Thanks in advance.
All the Best,
StevieVee
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Amadeus
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Posted: 29th Apr 2003 06:20
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thank you ever so much for the wonderful advice all of you, I'm going and trying it out right now. As for the FOG Distance, I was alittle perplexed, and still am with that function, because even when I turn fog off, once I go away from the houses I've made so far, they don't reach the horizon point, the walls of the house just simply don't show up, but it seems like they should go on for at least a little while longer. Perhaps this is something that cannot be avoided in Dark Basic. If you know of anyway to make an object still visible up to or at least fairly near to the horizon line, that would be awesome, because, and I don't want to try to sound cocky, but I'm working on a MMORPG that has some really really awesome stuff in it, basically if done right, that can put Everquest into it's little place. But the disappearing walls could hamper my situation, unless there is a way to make realistic looking fog and just use that all the time. I know I ask alot, but trust me, once I learn this program, it will be more posts of opinions of gameplay as far as beta-testing than all these basic questions. And I will be posting something fairly soon, within the next few weeks, and then a major beta test sometime in June, once I finally get time to work on it and not so much on school work. Again, thanks ever so much for all the advice.

Cheers,
Drew

Life is a tale told by an idoit, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. - MacBeth
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Beta1
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Posted: 29th Apr 2003 14:49
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Could you post a picure of your disappearing walls it might make it a bit clearer whats up. It might be the camera range cutting them off but its hard to tell without seeing it.

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spooky
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Posted: 29th Apr 2003 20:15
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Remember default camera range is only 3000 units, so as soon as you are 3000 units away from a house, it will be 'culled' and start disapearing. You can of course set camera range to say 10000 but then db has to draw lots of stuff you probably can't see because they are too far away and it WILL slow things down. The general idea is to set a camera range and then a fog distance a little less than the camera range, so objects only dissapear behind the fog.

Look at set camera range command:

This command will set the viewing range of the camera. The Front Value specifies the closest point beyond
which the camera starts to draw the 3D scene. The Back Value specifies the furthest point beyond which
the camera stops drawing the 3D scene. The parameters must be specified using real numbers greater than
zero. The default range starts drawing the 3D scene with a front value of 1 and a back value of 3000.

SYNTAX
SET CAMERA RANGE Near Value, Far Value
SET CAMERA RANGE Camera Number, Near Value, Far Value

Gronda, Gronda
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Amadeus
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Posted: 1st May 2003 00:30
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Thank you sonic, I had read the book about 5 minutes after I posted this and felt really really stupid. lol. But I like your idea about fogging. I'll try that. You guys are all very nice and informative and I thank you for all the help.

Life is a tale told by an idoit, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. - MacBeth
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