Can I copy the SE skyboxes for use in my own levels?

[Pond]

I'm pretty new to SeriousEd, and need some help!:D I've been able to make working skyboxes from scratch, and then I noticed SE comes with all the in-game skyboxes, and I thought it would be nice and easy to select the entities(skybox room, directional light, and background viewer), and simply paste them into my map for use.

However, I can't seem to make that work. I can paste the entities just fine, but I can't get it to light the level. Am I overlooking a step or two? Thanks.

[Michael Harris]

You should be able to drag-and-drop one of the pre-made (prefab) skyboxes right from the virtual tree into the world you are working on and then (am not sure which) add or join it. The box, textures, background viewer, light, etc. should all come in at once when you do it this way.

There may be a few things you have to do after that, which I frankly don't know. Drag and drop one in, then review/check the settings for it, its contents and the walls and ceiling of the main part of your world against the tutorial notes and the way you have learned to do it manually.

[pompey]

1. drag in skybox, place away from ur map.

2. go into skybox and select the light entity (i.e. the sun), on the property menu make sure that lens flare only is NOT checked.

3. select the polys of ur world, or as many of them that u want to be lit up by the sun. hit Q, and then go to the shadow tab. Check the direct and direct ambient check boxes. further u can adjust the shadow detail by decreasing the cluster size, for outdoors 0.5 is normally good.

4. Finally hit NUM6 and press r to recalculate shadows. and voila! if it still wont work press h to turn shadows on if they were previously off!

[Michael Harris]

following is the text (sorry, no pictures) of Synthetic's tutorial on using existing skyboxes, from his now defunct www.beyondserious.com site.......hope it's ok to post it.....I'll remove it (edit it out) if there is a problem with it being here

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Map Tutorial - How to add a skybox - the easy way


By : Synthetic

This Tutorial borrows from Lutrosis Skybox tutorial from STP.
If you want to make custom skyboxes please use Lutrosis Skybox tutorial
I made this tutorial because there is a much easier way to add the default skyboxs found in SS
We will assume you know how to navigate in SE and create basic rooms etc...

Step 1 : Create A Big Ass Room
Start off by creating a new document and make a new 'Conus Primitive'
make it w = 1024 L = 1024 H = 1024 and choose any texture you would like
Position it at 0,0,0 also make sure the 'Room' flag is checked.
Then 'Add' the primitive to our world


(image was here)

Step 2 : Room Preparation
Now switch to polygon mode (P) and double click one polygon to select the entire room.
Then Shift click the floor polygon so it is deselected now bring up the tools menu (q)
and under the 'Polygon' tab check the 'Portal' flag.
Now select the floor polygon and bring up the tools menu again (q)
and go to the 'Shadows' tab you can either check the 'Fullbright' for complete light
or check the the 'Directional' and 'Directional Ambiant' feilds for our world to be light up by our sun only.

Now we should have just the floor and the rest of our polygon's as 'portals'

Step 3 : Create Our SkyBox
Here comes the easy part...
on the left side of your SE you should have the Virtual tree shown in the pic below.
We want to select the 'Backgrounds' folder.


(image was here)

Now just choose the background you want and 'Drag and drop' it into our world
We then need to position it outside our world so lets put it at : x = 1026 y = 0 z = 0
Instead of 'Adding' the skybox we will choose the ' Join Layers' option

and thats it!
Press 6 on the numeric keypad for the 3d view and then press 't' to test it out.
Our very own simple world complete with an easy to make skybox =)
Thanks goes out to Lutrosis for his excellent skybox tutorial

[Pond]

Thanks guys, I appreciate the help.