I am making a cell where the ceiling of the building has been destroyed a bit and has some holes in it. So I was going to put a WastelandSkyPlaneOverheadDome above it, so that if its daytime its 'sunny' and night time its dark, that kind of thing. But no matter where I put the dang thing in the GECK I cant seem to get it to show up ingame, I have it like 10 ft above the building right now, easily visible in geck with 'sky' on. But ingame it does not exist, its just grey above the level. I have the fog set on far to like 15000 so its not the fog blocking it, it simply doesnt exist. I have its external emittance set to CapitolWastelandBoarderRegion so it changes as the time does. I am using a clean save. Am I missing something? Why does it just not show up in game? It is not set to initially disabled. Do I have to set it to reflect or refract the level or something to make it visible even though it isnt reflecting anything?

http://i885.photobucket.com/albums/ac56/Gunmaster95/PlaneV1.jpg in geck, no sky. Its about 5-10 ft above the roof.
http://i885.photobucket.com/albums/ac56/Gunmaster95/PlaneV2.jpg in geck, sky on. Clearly still completly visible.
http://i885.photobucket.com/albums/ac56/Gunmaster95/PlaneV3.jpg in game. Not there... (taken from roughly same angle as View 2 in geck)

Gunmaster95

I could never get that one working either. WastelandSkyPlane and WastelandSkyPlaneOverheadFlat work fine. You might be able to stretch WastelandSkyPlane to fit.

If WastelandSkyPlane is too small, a last resort could be FakeSkyDome01. It scrolls but the emittance is really dim .

One thing I noticed is that in the few places "WastelandSkyPlaneOverheadDome" is used, they have the external emittance set to a weather type.

I loaded up NtlGuardDepot01 just to check if something changed. GECK open/closed, new game/old save - nada. I think there's something screwy with the WastelandSkyPlaneOverheadDome model. Or maybe a display setting or it gets triggered somehow (doubt it).

If the usable plane is too small, can you not just scale it up?

Yea the one in Ntl Guard Depot doesnt work either. Ok the other two do work like you said, but to get them to fit over the whole building, and not have parts you can see through to the grayness, I have to make them 10x and in the case of the flat, use multiple of them. This made it look like crap. And only worked even slightly in daytime whne its very bright. At night, when its gray, its obviously like 10ft above the building (any higher and I would have ot use MANY MANY of them to cover) and kills immersion and looks horrible. The Dome is the only one that would fit well and look good, anyone know how to make it work? I fear if I cannot, I use have to use bright spots to blot out the holes, and make it looks like its rediculously bright outside, and rather dark inside, which wont make much sense most of the time, like at night...

I just found something that is almost perfect, you can tell an interior cell to act like an exterior climate. This makes a sky automatically for you, and sets the fog and all that. The only problem, is that it also makes sunlight hit every single little inch of the cell, so its for like a building with only one floor and 0 roof whatsoever. So it wont work... I guess I may just have to close up the roof holes, even though they really add to the level.. Or someone else has some suggestions.

I just check Vault 108 A and it looks like it doesn't do anything there either. Sorry, no more suggestions...

Gunmaster,

Check out the "IndRmBgCorInWinL01" piece, as there are Wall pieces that have windows in them and moving sky beyond - for just these situations. These are for interior cells, and when you run Havok, the the mini-sky-plane moves just as though you were looking outside.

Pull that piece into a cell and activate Havok with the HK button - you'll see it move. Perhaps you can take the sky-plane part and use that in your interior cell?

Luck,

Miax

Ya, I was going to mention the interior "exterior" . I've only tried it once, but it killed the lighting and shadows. Magic sunlight bleeding through 6 layers of solid concrete. If there is a way to have the sky look bright but not give off any light, that would be really cool to be able to use the actual sky.

I finally figured out why nifskope wouldn't show anything in the render window (didn't like \Program Files\...), and the new version detected my FO3 install. I almost did a back flip is was so happy. :twirl:

If you open up FakeSkyDome01 in nifskope, under NiMaterialProperty - I set Glossiness to 10 (from 60) and Emit Multi to 7 (from 2) which matches WastelandSkyPlane. It's just as bright now.
LtRayGlowGreenBrt01 or similar might come in handy to fuzz the detail.

I'm going to poke around with WastelandSkyPlaneOverheadDome (would be nice to get it working since it's already in-game), but I'm a total nifscope noob. 90% of that stuff is still miles above me. But at least it works now, yippee!

Well, since FakeSkyDome01 fits over the building well, and its pretty far away and good looking I am going to try this. I have barely used NifSkope (only to redirect texture paths for weapons) so I may be lost But I will give it a go.

K I swapped out those values, and it looks fantastic in the geck, and ingame. It is pretty much what I was going for originally, if not even better. Thanks so much for figuring all that out for me!

Adding LtRayGrowGreenBrt01 makes it look far better in geck, but in game it is only a very very faint white orb... So I dont know whats up with that haha... but its fine, it looks fantastic as is. Thanks again.

No problem. I was going to upload it, but it was real late (fell asleep right after).

I have FakeSkyDome01 in a couple of cells, but I used fx spots to make it bright. Now I can remove them.

Did you set the emittance on the LtRayGrowGreenBrt01 to the same as the sky? Don't really matter since your happy, but might do the trick.

You know what, I will try chaging the values for that as well. See what I can get to look good. But it might be like the other sky piece, because it looks really good in the GECK but not in game, so it might not help. Ill try it anyway

Had a chance to look at WastelandSkyPlaneOverheadDome, I think I fixed it. It only works with external emittance set to a weather type (unsure why).

Here's a zip with the fixed WastelandSkyPlaneOverheadDome nif and the bright FakeSkyDome01: http://www.mediafire.com/?iom3iyfjczg

Now when I coc to NtlGuardDepot01, there's a sky!

Nice job EZ!

Good Job EzOn3!

I look forward to trying the fixed meshes in-game soon.

Wow it looks much better! That is fantastic. I am going to include these fixed meshes in my mod if you don't mind Since I will now use the basic sky dome instead of my crazy custom one. Thanks again for figuring all this out

Use them anyway you please

On the FakeSkyDome01 (the others too, but not as noticeable because it's much slower), the scrolling texture: starts off slow - speeds up - slows down - stops for a second - repeat.

FakeSkyDome01 uses (both NiTextureTransformController and NiFloatData -> Keys):
Start: 0.0000
Stop: 66.6667

The others use (both NiTextureTransformController and NiFloatData -> Keys):
Start: 0.0000
Stop: 400.0000 (much slower)

I'm not sure if that's seconds, miliseconds, key frames (something is telling me seconds)?

Is there a way to make it continuous, so it never slows down, speeds up or stops?

I might be on to something that will work even better

You can flag the cell to behave as an exterior. Assign it a climate composed of weather(s) that have only ambient lighting and no sunlight.

You can shut off the lighting in the weather? I can't seem to find it

I was playing around with different textures for the fakeskydome. I noticed that the texture the fake skies use is 512x512 - it's pretty bland and it gets a bit pixelated when the skydome stretched. So I started poking around with the textures the weather uses which are 1024x1024. I can stretch the crap out of it and it still looks good. I even made some that start off twice as big that can be stretched twice as much and it still looks good.

http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/8329/sky1e.jpg, http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/186/sky2r.jpg

I was going to try a 3 layer (1: cloud lower, 2: cloud upper, 3: background color), but if I can shut off the sunlight - it will moot this.

Alright great. If you can get fantastic looking actual sky that can be stretched huge over your whole level without being pixelated and obviously 10ft away that would be awsome!

Ok, I have some WIPs to test. I'm still trying these out, but it would be helpful to get some more input. Just a heads up, I tried to coc into a test cell with a bunch of them and a huge light and after about 30 sec, it locked up. But I tried a few one at a time and it has been working fine. I think it was just too much for my PC. I can preview them all in the GECK so I don't think it's a model error, but I'm just getting my feet wet with NifSkope.

So, http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/2599/originalfakesky.jpg (without / with emittance). The one I tweaked a few posts back is just a "brighter" version of this.

And here are some new ones with larger textures. The naming scheme works like this: L# = number of layers, X# = size.
The "layers" are basically a copy of the original, but a little larger - so it looks like it's "behind" the layer in front. A single layer is 640 tris, so multiply the layers times 640 for a total triangle count.
They come in two sizes: X1 is the original size (around 650 units), X2 is double the original size (around 1300 units). If the X1 is stretched to the max, using an X2 will let you go twice as far. Otherwise, there's no difference between them.

Just changing the texture on a single layer one made a big improvement IMO, the multi layers are that much better. Just keep in mind they are 1024x1024 (except blue and stars).

http://img237.imageshack.us/img237/3333/fakeskydomel1x1.jpg, http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/4166/fakeskydomel1x2.jpg

http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/5126/fakeskydomel2x1.jpg, http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/4430/fakeskydomel2x2.jpg

http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/9656/fakeskydomel3x1.jpg, http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/8831/fakeskydomel3x2.jpg

http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/8729/fakeskydomel4x1.jpg, http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/6356/fakeskydomel4x2.jpg

http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/2817/fakeskydomel5x1.jpg, http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/3081/fakeskydomel5x2.jpg

http://www.mediafire.com/?xjgkdnjgmiz

There are 10 TEMPLATE files, the rest are variations of those 10.

To change a texture, it needs to be changed in two places:
NiHeader -> Strings -> The string below the layer number
BSShaderNoLightingProperty -> File Name (two entries below the NiTriStrips for that layer)
EG:
NiHeader -> Strings ->

...FakeSkyDomeWeather01L1:0 (<- Layer 01)Textures\Sky\WastelandCloudCloudyLower01.dds (<- Layer 01 Texture)FakeSkyDomeWeather01L2:0 (<- Layer 02)Textures\Sky\WastelandCloudCloudyUpper01.dds (<- Layer 02 Texture)...

...NiTriStrips FakeSkyDomeWeather01L1:0 (<- Layer 01)...BSShaderNoLightingProperty -> File Name -> Textures\Sky\WastelandCloudCloudyLower01.dds (<- Layer 01 Texture)...NiTriStrips FakeSkyDomeWeather01L2:0 (<- Layer 02)...BSShaderNoLightingProperty -> File Name -> Textures\Sky\WastelandCloudCloudyUpper01.dds (<- Layer 02 Texture)...

To change the speed of a layer, it also needs to be changed in two places (the higher the number, the slower it moves):
NiTextureTransformController -> Stop Time (four entries below the NiTriStrips for that layer)
NiFloatData -> Keys -> Keys (2) -> Time (six entries below the NiTriStrips for that layer)
EG:

...NiTriStrips FakeSkyDomeWeather01L1:0 (<- Layer 01)...NiTextureTransformController ->  Stop Time -> 66.6667 (<- Layer 01 Stop Time)...NiFloatData -> Keys -> Keys (2) -> Time File -> 66.6667 (<- Layer 01 Time)...NiTriStrips FakeSkyDomeWeather01L2:0 (<- Layer 02)...NiTextureTransformController ->  Stop Time -> 66.6667 (<- Layer 02 Stop Time)...NiFloatData -> Keys -> Keys (2) -> Time File -> 66.6667 (<- Layer 02 Time)...

The transparency (Alpha) and emittance (Emit Multi) are adjusted in the NiMaterialProperty directly below that layers NiTriStrips.
Alpha 1.0 is no transparency (opaque), 0.5 is half, 0.0 is invisible (single layer and the outer most layer in multi layered ones have no NiAlphaProperty, so this is not used there)
Emit Multi 1 is default. If you don't set an emittance, this is not used. The higher the number, the brighter it will be.
EG:

...NiTriStrips FakeSkyDomeWeather01L1:0 (<- Layer 01)NiMaterialProperty -> - Alpha 0.5 (<- Layer 01 Transparency - half)- Emit Multi 1 (<- Layer 01 Emittance)...NiTriStrips FakeSkyDomeWeather01L2:0 (<- Layer 02)NiMaterialProperty -> - Alpha 1.0 (<- Layer 02 Transparency - opaque)- Emit Multi 1 (<- Layer 02 Emittance)...

That about does it, let me know what you think. I've only use NifSkope for a short time, so I'm interested to see if I messed up.

Note that the all layers are currently moving at the same speed (except for like 2 alternates). I haven't really mess with that yet.

Set sunlight (not sun) to 000 for every time of day.

Those look pretty awsome. I will try what Rhaork said and try the exterior thing with no sunlight just to see if it looks good though.

Awesome input Ez0n3! Thank you for taking the time to put this together, I learned some new things from this (especially about the texture layering). Damn skippy!

Cheers mate

Miax