This is an experimental sky I whipped up today because of Purple Puppy over at d20. A fiendishly simple deep sea skybox. There's actually two gradient layers, with noise and blur filters for texture, and the light beams are another layer I faded in. I made the beams dim on purpose, so they wouldn't dominate the sky. I kinda like it. No detail, but better than fog alone, and suitably murky looking, I think.
I put it on my Deep Sea area to check it out in context:
Actually, in this case simple is good. In the deep ocean, very little can be seen save for what light is able to shine from above... so, considering that fact, your Deep Sea skybox is actually an excellent and potentially useful creation that could help add some variety to building undersea realms. If you were thinking of adding anything, perhaps some seaweed floating up or hanging down amidst the murk may add to the gloomy mood it provides.
Whatever you decide... if you ever release it, I'd be proud to include it in the CSP. Keep up the good work! Your skyboxes could add quite a bit to Neverwinter Nights. :thumb:
What Chaos_Theocrat said. In this case, less is more. You know what would look pretty cool here, a kelp forrest. Similar to the ones in Monterey Bay in California. Here's a sample.
Thanks guys. I like the seaweed and kelp idea. Nice pic too, Tybae. The color almost matches perfectly with mine. Saved it. The nice part is, if I did it right, it might be easy, especially if I keep it somewhat shadowy.
I've been checking out some of my earlier skies in-game more. Besides the slight stretching I still have to adjust for, I've noticed just how much the perspective can skew, especially if you're close to the edge of the area. I've also noticed in mine and others, that moving around looks strange if there are objects near the horizon appear to be close, since they don't move with the scene. While I think builders could compensate for that by limiting the player's movement some, it also makes me think "less is more".
*Izk wanders off for dinner and to find more kelp images, wonders why kelp forests make Mask grin, possibly thinking of kelp sandwiches (with mayo)*
Heh, that's actually a picture of an exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. You can probably find more pictures of the kelp forrest on google images, or maybe on the aquarium's website. You can also search for Sea Otters as they live in the forrests as well. When they sleep, they wrap themselves in kelp to keep from drifting away.
So I wonder if there's any chance of seeing a kelp forest sea floor tileset now? Is that what Mask was grinning about? That would be interesting...
I love Google Image search. I rely heavily on it these days, even when doing "analog" art. It's amazing what you can find. I've used it a lot for animals, trying to find good poses and reference images for illustrations I've done. A few years ago I needed images of the USS New Jersey. The quantity of pictures I found was amazing. From WWII history sites to model builders clubs, I was able to see almost every inch of it. I have to share the story behind that. I had decided to build a simple wooden ship model as a xmas gift for someone. They ended up with a 30 inch long, hand made and painted wooden "toy" USS New Jersey, complete with rotating turrets. Another fine OCD moment. Funny thing is, I usually do darker, mystical stuff, so it's always a surprise to everybody when I do something like that.
[quote=Izk The Mad;11914]So I wonder if there's any chance of seeing a kelp forest sea floor tileset now? Is that what Mask was grinning about? That would be interesting...[/quote]
I've always thought that there was a need for a good underwater tileset.
I gave the Undersea one by WoRm a try... but in most of my tests it was just a bit too intensive to really recommend for everyone's use. A number of the WoRm tilesets tend to take a long time to load up either in-game, in the toolset, or both. And that's with nothing added to them! There were a couple different texture options, DDS and TGA, but still something in those tilesets still makes them a bit on the slow side compared to other tilesets.
Probably, it's due to the use of high poly models... or something like that.
I also tried a few of the older underwater tilesets that had come out way before the WoRm one, but even they had several issues that were never corrected, thus making them less than ideal choices for other reasons. It was in their favor though, that despite their issues they were fast loading and fast running, which is something that I am for with tilesets in general.
So, I would like to see an underwater tileset that not only looks good, but runs fast and works well for everyone with as few issues as possible. One idea that all the older undersea tilesets were unto that I think was a good idea, was the concept of reskinning the regular Nwn forest tileset but as a new, non-replacing underwater tileset including sunken ships and the like.
If an improved variation on that concept could be devised, it would make for the ideal underwater tileset, and one that I could, truly, recommend.
There are kelp tiles in the current desert tileset. With proper choices on sunlight color, fog, and the right skybox along with what tiles you choose to build with, you can fairly easily create an underwater vision within this set.
Now with the TNO additions being final and included in 1.69, there are many suitable placeables that would also make the set easier to envision as an underwater set.
Downside would be the amount of things that would NOT really fit underwater... or just wouldn't look right. The 'kelp tiles' are a bit limited right now, but it is one of the things that I intend to work a bit more on if time permits.
There are ruined buildings in the set, as well as many choices for 'building' terrain type tiles. Several of which I think would help a good builder to create an underwater feel for/from this set.
As to load times? Right now, we are waiting on compiling the tiles to see what we can do about the speed issues. Our only real issues are with 4 groups (3 are basically the same building, just re-skinned multiple ways) and one other 'group' that may take a bit of loading. I won't take the time to compile these things yet, since we are still working on them, sometimes the entire set, sometimes individually etc, and trying to keep track of what is compiled and not, would be too much extra work.
Suffice it to say that since EVERY tile will pass through CM3, they will compile without issue, except for maybe the animated water tiles....
