Help With Skybox Texture

I am having difficulty creating a custom skybox texture. The skybox appears just fine with LDR lighting, but with HDR lighting it become very bright. I have tried creating a darker texture for the HDR skybox, but the texture for the HDR skybox shown below is already significantly darker than the LDR one without producing any improvement.

Since my experience with creating textures is limited to creating mini-maps for Empires I'm hoping someone here will be able to help out.


Skybox with LDR lighting:


Skybox with HDR lighting:

 

Second picture looks way more awesome, it's like a burning sunrise. I don't know what you think, but I would keep it. Maybe add some dark clouds, and you can fix that. I had that before and it makes most maps in Empires look ridicliously bright. Something to do with the light_enviorment settings.

 

have you got a seperate vmt and vtf for both normal and hdr?

i.e.
empsky_day3_hdr_dn.vmt
empsky_day3_hdr_dn.vtf
empsky_day3_dn.vmt
empsky_day3_dn.vtf

the same texture just with hdr properties in the .vmt file

search your empires/materials/skybox folder and copy the .vmt lines there as best you can into your own vmt files, changing the texture name of course

 

No, I copied the structure of the existing HDR skybox .vmt files and made one set of .vmt for both the LDR and HDR textures.

Code:

"sky"
{
	"$hdrcompressedTexture" "skybox/empsky_fogtown_hdrbk"
	"$ignorez" "1"
	"$basetexture" "skybox/empsky_fogtownbk"
}

And I thought to test the light_environment. But even radically altering the amount of ambient and direct light had no affect on the skybox. Besides the default skybox I was using prior to this one didn't have this problem.

 

shouldnt that be hdrbasetexture? also I notice the other file formats are empsky_texturename_hdr_bk. as long as the filenames all match up it should work but try sticking to the exact same format the other ones use. youre also missing the "$nofog 1" line. This could be the problem seeing as your map is densely covered in fog right? im not gonna go testing this, but unless you know exactly what youre leaving out and doing with this, just keep everything the same structure as the official emp ones.

 

Yes it should be hdrbasetexture. I looked mostly at the the default Valve skyboxes for the structure and didn't notice that difference. A quick change and recompile shows the skybox looks like it should now. Thanks a bunch.


And I don't know why, but Empire's HDR skyboxes appear to be breaking naming convention by adding that space before the suffix.

 

They are, but you don't have to follow them. It really doesn't make a difference, so long as mappers remember that the suffix needn't be included in the Map Properties.

 

ah, sorry. didnt realise it was the emp guys who deviated from the normal naming format. my bad. Anyways, glad it's fixed and working right now.