Updated Jan 23 2005

MW4& BK Creating custom skies

Until recently, custom skies were simply not possible, but thanks to the hardwork of Jehosephat who first figured out how to make custom skies a few months ago we can all do it now. Some of the information required to make them look right remained unknown until recently. Several map makers have since added to Jehosephat's work. So I take great pleasure in presenting the combined findings of Jehosephat, Metal Badger, Verybad and myself to you for the first time.

Mercs Notes: Most of this system still applies to MW4: Mercs custom sky creation but yet another bug or perhaps a change in the editor prevents the later stages of this section from working. Typically the sky appears ok locally but on a server the other players just see a white skies. So Mercs map makers can use this as a rough guide but we hope to bring you a full guide for mercs shortly. This system does work for MW4 and MW4:BK

Step 1: Creating panoramic image.

The hard part of making custom skies is getting a seemless panoramic image to work with. Next is creating a sky texture that will appear directly above the player. The basic idea is to have 5 textures, one for the north, south, east, west and top views. Luckily, Verybad found a program that will do all this for you. You can find it on the Skypaint website. You can also use Bryce to create the sky images. Once you have your panoramic view you need to cut it up in to 4 pieces. I found using the distort look in my favourite paint package to place a slight curve on the skies got rid of the box look that normally appears when you create skies using bryce. A fake curve hides the joins if the textures match up exactly you see.

Now cut these images up to make the sky for the North, south east and west and make a Top texture that matches them.

Now save them off as 256x256 24bit tga files.

Step 3: Naming your Sky textures

The naming of sky textures is vital if you want them to work. The naming scheme is a simple one. All textures start with the name sky, the first letter of each word that makes up your sky is then used after the word sky. If you use 2 words in the name then just do as I have explained above. If you only used one, use the first letter of the name twice. I found, failing to use this naming scheme prevented my sky from working.

Lets assume we're using my red sky. The name would be skyrr because the name of the sky is Red..... we use the first letter twice.

If i called it Really Reddy sky it would still have a double R in the name, but if I had called it Deep Blue sky the name would have been skydb instead of skyrr.

Next we need to add a letter to the name that tells the editor where that texture goes in the sky. We already have our sky and we know its name is skyrr. This is what the extra letter means and it shows you where it goes in the name.

skyrru = up
skyrrf = forward
skyrrr = right
skyrrb = back
skyrrl = left

Now all our skies are 256x256 in size, this means they are the biggest textures the game will allow for the sky. So we name all the 256x256 textures 1 like so. This is what the final name for the 256x256 textures should look like.

skyrru1.tga
skyrrf1.tga
skyrrr1.tga
skyrrb1.tga
skyrrl1.tga

From now on we just need to resize these textures by halving the current size and changing the number at the end of the name to 2, then 3, then 4, and eventually 5 as we go.

Step 3: Resizing, creating an renaming the sky files.

Lets start by taking each of the sky files we already have in 256x256 24bit tga format and create 20 more tga files from them.

Resize each of the 5 textures and save them off under a new name. Take the first sky texture skyrru1 and resize it to 128x128. Now save it as skyrru2. Now resize skyrru2 to 64x64 and save it off as skyrru3. Resize skyrru3 to 32x32 and save it of as skyrru4. Resize skyrru4 to 16x16 and save it off as skyrru5.

Now do the same for skyrrf1, skyrrr1, skyrrb1 and skyrrl1.

This list tells you what size each file should be based on the last number in its name.

1 256x256
2 128x128
3 64x64
4 32x32
5 16x16

Each one should be saved of as a 24bit TGA, I actually saved mine as 32 bit TGA files which still worked pretty well.

I have recently noticed that Black Knight prefers sky names to be in the namenumber forumat like this... mysky01 or mysky02. In such cases the sky name becomes skym1 or skym2. Where m means mysky and the final number if the number at the end of the name. When the number is ommited the editor looks for a skym0 rather than a skymm like mentioned above. I had not seen this in mw4 though and not tested the bk system in mw4. However it may work better if you stick to the BK system in the future.

Step 4: Getting the editor to use tour sky.

Making your sky folder

Sticking to my red sky for this example, go in to mechwarrior4\content\Skies\ and create a folder called redd_sky. The extra 'd' in the name just makes the name the same length as the file I'm about to borrow for hex editing, that's all. Load up one of the skyname_sky.erf files in a hex editor. Change the names of any sky name mentioned in that file to match the names of the first 5 skys you created. EG skyrri1, skyrrb1 etc etc. Now save that in to your new sky folder.

Directory names are also important. If your sky is called mordor dawn then your directory will be called mordor_dawn_sky. If your sky is called red, then your directory will be called red_sky. You may remember that your sky names also follow the first letter of each word in your name principle. Now you can see why. It is the way you name the directory and the sky files that allows any name to be used for your skies. This means you can have more than 1 custom sky installed.

Now go into your Mechwarrior 4/contents directory and add your new sky ERF file to sky.build like so.

File=Skies\urban02_sky\urban02_sky.ERF

Be sure to change the name of the directory and sky to match your own.

Editing sky.hints

Next open up the sky.hints file in mechwarrior4\content\Skies and starting at

[arctic03_sky_bk]
Alias=skya3b1
resourcify=false

Select everything down to but not including...

[desert07_sky_bk]
Alias=skyd7b1
resourcify=false

The example above is from the next sky on the list so we don't want it, we just want everything above it. Copy the text you selected and paste it in to the end of the sky.hints files.

Replace any references to the artic sky with a reference to your own sky textures or sky directory (the one you created above. Remember, there will be 25 entries here, 1 for every sky texture you made. Take some time to study the test and you will see the pattern. Its not difficult.

This will help avoid banding on your skies in the game. It allows the game to blend the colours better giving a more professional look to your skies. without it your skies will look awful.

Installing your sky textures

Now copy your 25 sky textures in to mechwarrior4\content\textures and load up the editor.

Edit the skies.build file found in your mechwarrior4/content folder and add the path to your new skies ERF file like so.

File=Skies\urban02_sky\urban02_sky.ERF

Changing the urban02 to what ever your sky folder and sky ERF name is.

You should see your sky listed in mission properties list of available sky files. Now you get to see how badly your first attempt at a sky went. So do not pass go, go straight to step 1 and fix your mistakes :)

Notes on possible errors.

If something goes wrong you will find the editor fails to load. There is no need to panic. You have several choices. You can undo the changes you have made or you can edit the mission your making to use a sky other than your custom one. This will allow the editor to load. To do so you just need to edit the sky lines from the following file which can be found in side your mission folder .

tb-arena.instance

The lines you need to change look similar to these.

sky=skies\teambanzai01_sky\teambanzai01_sky.erf
nightsky=skies\teambanzai01_sky\teambanzai01_sky.erf

As you can see there almost exact copies of the sky.build entries mentioned above so just pick a new sky from sky.build and past those entries in. Your editor will load again and you can change them to something else more suitable.