SkyBox Problem

Game Engine Game Engine Support and Discussion
#1

Ok, so I have a skybox, but it’s high up in the 3D View, because if it was close to the character it would look like the character is near the sky, so I made it high… The thing is, is that now, the clipping range clips off the sky, which isn’t what I want… I can increase the clipping range, but I’ll decrease the frame rate… So what do I do? How can I make the skybox not be affected by the clipping range, or is there another effective way to make a skybox or skydone…

Thanks for your support guys,
Linkxgl

#2

Vertex parent the skybox to the player (select the skybox, and then the player, then hit tab, select a vertex, and ctrl-p) this means the skybox will copy the player’s location, but not rotation. If the skybox is scaled to be a little smaller than the clipping range, it will appear to be extremely far away, no matter how much the player moves around. (actually, you could scale it to be very small and it would still appear to be very far away, except that anything farther away than the skybox wouldn’t be visible)

Alternately, you can put it in a separate scene which is added as a background scene, and have the skybox scene’s camera only copy the rotation of the main camera (this means anything in the main scene will appear to be closer than the sky, but it might be a little more resource intensive)

#3

So, for the main character I could have the skybox vertex parented to it, then scale it and add it into the character group?

Him good idea… Ok, but the bad thing about that is that I have to use the same sky for every level, and I don’t I’ll want that… Plus, if I go into a house or something that’ll be weird to have a skybox… What do you suggest on doing then?

#4

Try this then- the skybox is in the main scene (so you can have a different sky for each scene- I’d still use skyboxes inside, so you can have windows and see out of the building)
The skybox has a simple python script that gets the current camera from Rasterizer, and sets its position to the camera’s position. That way, no matter if you change cameras, or import your character setup from another blend, or whatever, the sky will appear the same.

#5

but doesn’t depend on where the centre point of the sky box is? Because if the center is off, so will the skybox… And I was planning to use a large plane… I guess I’ll have to change the center point right?

Ok, I’ll have to learn a bit of rasterizer, thanks for your help!

#6

Wait, sorry to bump this thread again, but I don’t know if you read my post yet or not, so I’ll need to post again :confused:

How can I get he current camera?

#7

I was half-awake when I said Rasterizer, I meant GameLogic.getCurrentScene().active_camera

#8

Ok thanks, I can let thread die now…