Is it possible to replace the dynamic sky with a static HDR skybox?

Lumberyard Discussion Visual Effects
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#1

The dynamic sky is beautiful, but sometimes I like to use one of my HDR skydome images to light a small scene. Is this possible in Lumberyard?

I followed the instructions here:

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/latest/userguide/sky-skyboxes-params.html

but without much success. When I set the material, the dynamic sky changes colors to a bright yellow but the texture I chose is nowhere to be found.

The article also mentions that HDR settings are not supported when using a static skybox. Does that mean that it is not possible to use HDR images as skybox or does it mean that the HDR settings in the time-of-day window are not supported?

Thanks in advance!

#2

Anyone knows more about this? I saw CryEngine tutorial videos, in which people successfully loaded a skybox within CryEngine. But if I do the same in Lumberyard it does not work

#3

So I guess this is not possible currently? How come? Any way to fix this?

#4

Hi @n-i-c-l-a-s, If you look at the BeachCity download you will see that this uses a static skybox. The UpdatSky functionality has been turned off in the TOD Tool. This means the lighting changes, but not the sky. Additionally in the console there is a c_var e_TimeOfDay where you can set your TOD and e_TimeOfDaySpeed that allows you to set the update speed.

Hope this helps.

#5

Thanks so much for your reply, @ChrisDB !

I tried the BeachCity example yesterday and while it features a static skybox in combination with TOD lighting, I was kind of confused about how it does it, as it seems to be very different than the LY skybox tutorial explains the process, so I have a few questions and observations:

  • The “skybox multiplier”-setting (step 3 of the tutorial) does not seem to do anything, no matter what value I set it to the sky looks exactly the same

  • The first time I loaded beach city, the material for the skybox under Rollup-bar->terrain->environment->skybox->material (step 5 of the tutorial) is set to the familiar EngineAssets/Materials/Sky/Sky-material which uses the SkyHDR shader, although the tutorial (step 7) explicitly states that one should use a material utilizing the Sky-Shader

  • When looking at the material, I saw that there are no textures setup anyway, only a basic gray diffuse texture, the cloud-skybox nowhere to be found

  • If I set a material myself, I experience the same behaviour as before, with the exception that the sky the original cloud-skybox of the level is still visible . I guess this is just the wrong place to setup the material for the skybox?

-So I figured, since there definitely is a skybox applied, there must be some way to do it. So I looked through the materials within the BeachCity-project folder and found it under objects->beachcity->skydome: a multimaterial with a single sub_material named textclouds_sky->SkyDome_test. Surprisingly, the submaterial uses the DistanceClouds shader, but has the cloud-skybox-texture applied in the diffuse channel

  • The skybox image is a grayscale image which seems to be used as an multiplicative mask for the sky(fog)-colors. This seems counterintuitive, is it also possible to use a full-color HDR panorama (or cube-map) as a skybox?

  • “Select assigned objects” tells me that this material is applied to a GeomEntity named “Dome”, which (I think) is an instance of the tempskydome-emtity found under objects->beachCity->Skydome

  • So I guess I have looked in the wrong place all the time, the material for the skybox under Rollup-bar->terrain->environment->skybox->material does not seem to be the way to set skyboxes up in LY, but one has to use a separate dome prop

  • Btw, is it actually possible to deactivate TOD lighting? It is definitely beautiful, but I can think of many situations (indoor, non-realistic, etc) where I wouldn’t want to use it.

Thanks very much again, and all the best,
Niclas

#6

a lot of time has passed, and it seems we need an answer
how to create a texture for SkyHDR?

#7

@didzey

Maybe this thread will help for static skyboxes?

3 Likes
#8

Yes thank you. But unfortunately I know how to create static skyboxes. I need to figure out how to make dynamic, texture-preserving skyHDR.

1 Like
#9

No one really knows how to preserve the texture of the sky, but at the same time make a shader skyboxHDR?
I need a starry sky. I want to do a cycle of day and night