I am trying to get a custom night sky into L4D2. I am following [URL=" http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/HDR_Skybox_Creation"]the tutorial here.[/URL] I rendered six images using Vue Pioneer (well seven if you count the rotation to workaround the watermark for the top image :D) and they look really nice as individual tgas. I used the composite image method imported to hdrshop then exported as a pfm (I changed no settings nor altered any images externally at this point) and successfully split the images using splitskybox. I have the six pfms which I then compiled using the supplied txt files (enabling $nocompress). Now I have the six VTFs but this is how they look and a sample vmt is in the upper right corner of the image.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v87/KingMango/Problems/skyboxtesting0001a.jpg When I use vtfedit to open them (the compiled vtfs) they appear at a higher exposure, and the banding is evident. I exported a HL2 skybox to compare and they look virtually the same in terms of quality an exposure in VTFedit, yet in game they look just fine and I have used the same syntax in the vmts for the HL2 skybox vtfs. I have yet to reduce the resolution of my images and to add the clampS, clampT to the txt and $basetexturetransform to the vmt, but I'm not convinced this is the problem. What it looks like is some sort of DirectX compression is being applied somewhere in the process. But I can't figure out how to solve it. I have noticed that the VTEX included with L4D2 is a little different than the OB. In the OB I can drag my pfms with the filename_hdrbk.pfm format but L4D2's requires me to relocate the side deisgnation and prefers instead files ending solely in _hdr. It should also be noted that after renaming the output vtfs to filename_hdrbk etc.. I get a HOM for the entire skybox. Also, L4D2's output creates a file that appears identical called filename.pwl.vtf Dunno what that is and the only hit I get on a search is in a tutorial that tells me to ignore that file :D Has anybody had any success with custom HDR skyboxes in L4D2? Best regards, Jim Castile _______________________________________________ L4Dmapper mailing list [email protected] http://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/l4dmapper
