I have been working on my skies from time to time, I made a new texture or two, but mostly, I'm planning.

I got a lot of ideas for this next installment of skies, and it's great.

Particles redone!
Tired or seeing that crappy rain? Or pathetic ashstorm dust? I'll be retexturing all the particles this time around, it's one thing that was never improved in my game, and that means retex!

Mesh maninpulation/edits!
Right now, I'm limited to what the weather system provides me, meshes that is, but with a few mesh edits and tweaks, even if it's just size or shape, can change a lot. I'm planning on improving snowfall and rainfall this way, as well as make the actual shape of the sky much nicer.

New stuff, like lightning bolts and crazy detailed night skies!
I've looked through the meshes, and I know what they are and what they do, with a few UV edits, the way night skies are rendered could be completely changed, possibly allowing a full sky starfield, or even lightning bolts in a storm, stuff like that.

More retextures!
I'm redoing a bunch of stuff again, I already got a few textures done, now I gotta do the rest.

Requests?
Got any requests? Feedback? I don't want you to tell me you don't like something after [RELz], if you want it changed, tell me now!

...

Screenshots!
I'll be updating this section when it needs to be updated, if you wanna see recent stuff, look at the list below.
- http://s5.tinypic.com/aebrwk.jpg
- http://s5.tinypic.com/2s64suq.jpg (Updated Saturday, March 21, 2009)
- http://i44.tinypic.com/20kdj0n.jpg (Updated Saturday, April 18, 2009)
- http://i40.tinypic.com/2cen4t3.jpg (Updated Thursday, April 16, 2009)
- http://i39.tinypic.com/2urnmmf.jpg (Updated Wednesday, May 20, 2009)
- http://i42.tinypic.com/33ehdma.jpg (Updated Sunday, June 7, 2009)
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DXDCw_7uoo&fmt=22 (Updated Thursday, April 16, 2009)

Progress Updates
I'll be updating this when I make progress that can't be shown in screenshots. What's been done? Take a look!
- I've finished the mesh edits on the daytime/nighttime sky meshes to allow full sky textures.
- I've finished all the particle retextures except for blizzard.
- I've finished the Partly Cloudy skies
- I've finished the Clear Skies
- I've finished the Blighted Skies
- I've finished the Foggy Skies
- I've finished the Rainy Skies
- I've finished the Thunderstorm skies
- I've finished the stormy skies
- I've finished the Ashstorm skies
- I've finished the Night skies


Ok, talk!

About rain:

I was working on this myself some time ago. I made an entirely new mesh and got it working. However it appears it's impossible to get it to play nicely with some of the .nif goodness such as reflect maps or other cool stuff, which led me to give up. I also tried in vain to form an idea how to make the rain smash towards the ground... but I never got anywhere, not even a solid idea on how it could theoretically be done (without doing really arcane stuff that I don't really want to bother people with).

It just annoys me that MW uses some kind of fixed .NIF settings for rain but not the rest of the game... grr. (Well it's probably used for snow as well).
The major thing i did was making the rain deeper, so you can see it further away.

Remember that the thickness can also be governed through the .INI file.

Cheers

(Also very, AWESOME project you have here).

And I just installed your V2 version yesterday! (which was great BTW)

That screeny is definitely impressive!

I wasn't fond of the http://i42.tinypic.com/158a5cj.jpg sky. Other than that, I like your skies very much.

Quoted for truth. Foggy skies are not as top-notch as the other skies.

Thanks for your advice/input. All I was really planning on changing in the rain/snow NIF's were the shape/size of the individual billboards so that I can make the rain/snow look a certain way.


I can agree with that, I wasn't particularly fond of that texture myself.


I just finished the new night sky textures, the problem is, the meshes really stretch the nebula textures, so I can't really make them look detailed, I think I'll try changing the texture resolutions to stuff like 2048x1024 before I mess with any of the meshes.

I'm also working on some new sunglare, I've been studying how the sun looks (by looking at it at different times of the day) and I got a pretty good idea of how a great looking texture could be made, I made the non-visible sun texture (for sunsets and when the sun is behind trees/etc), now I just gotta make this brilliant glare texture.


And off I go!

What? No replies? Well this is technically a double post, but it's not a bump since I actually have some news to share.


Ok, I'm done the sunglare textures, they look great. A little detail I added makes a world of difference and you hardly notice it, all this is is a small colourfull border around the circle that is the sun. I'm Also done the partly cloudy sky texture, I just pulled up a ton of sunset/sky pictures then stuck em all together to make a brilliant texture.

If you don't understand what I'm talking about, http://s5.tinypic.com/2s64suq.jpg.

That looks quite impressive. I am looking forward to it.

Sounds great, I'm looking forward to what you're coming up with.

And don't stare at the sun directly for too long.

I haven't really used your skies before, but I'm kinda wondering-will the night sky be fairly lore-accurate, as in it has all the constellations and such in the right places? Actually, as I seem to recall the constelations are separate Trishapes in the sky mesh, aren't they? Overall, I like the general look of the vanilla night sky-but if what you churn out is higher resolution/higher quality/better-looking, then I think I'd probably use it.

On another note, I've always wanted to see something that'd make sunsets/sunrises look like http://retirees.uwaterloo.ca/~rwwatt/pictures/SunSet.jpg http://image57.webshots.com/657/2/70/17/2121270170082954344IdhJKJ_fs.jpg or http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c18/Pharmacologycoed/Freelance%20Exhibition%20and%20Misc%20work/sunset.jpg. I'm not sure how technically possible that would be with the MW engine, however, since I don't think there's a way to modify the in-game ambient light in such a manner that it would be consistent with such a "look". It may have to wait for OpenMW.

I do agree though that the foggy sky from previous versions needs to change-it looks highly unnatural, and not in the good "well, this is 'another world'," way.

I ALWAYS follow lore. And yeah, they are trishapes in the mesh.

SWG's Skies comes with it's own INI settings, that do things like that.

I have to double post again? Sheesh...

Working on the http://s5.tinypic.com/2mdkyrk.jpg, as you can see it stretched my nebula so much there's no more detail, I'm going to have to try some different resolutions.

Nice work on the new skies so far. And the ideas to enhance the weather all sound great as well. Looking forward to watching progress for this.

Any news on the progress of this starwarsguy?

I'm going to second this. How is it coming along?

Intrested to hear this as well.

I use version 2, couldn't play without it, and this looks 10 times better.

So what I'm trying to say: Keep up the good work SWG!

Coming along good. http://i42.tinypic.com/9q8jdx.jpg a sneek peek at the new partly cloudy skies. Allthough I'll probably end up changing them again.

And about the mesh edits, I'm going to probably edit the UV's to allow huge textures that sprawl across the entire sky, so that you wouldn't see the texture repeating anywhere.

If there a mesh for the skybox?

If there a mesh? Do you mean Is there a mesh?

If that is the question, then I will answer by saying there is, there a bunch of meshes related to weather and sky.

This looks fantastic, I can't wait for the release of this

Your v2 has a slight seam causing a pretty little white stripe when partly cloudy. Just saying this so you're v3 will be even better? I love your skies.

As I've succeeded in editing the UV to allow textures sprawled across the entire sky, I'll be remaking all the textures. So that will be fixed, along with a TON of other improvements.

And I thought your last night sky textures pwned. Can't wait to see that... :shocking:

I'm amazed people haven't fiddled with it before. It will surly be a unique sky mod!

I was just wondering if there were any good sky mods, this looks great