Problems with getting a quality space skybox

Development Asset Creation
1

Hi i have been having trouble getting a quality space skybox to use for a solar system, I have followed every tutorial i could get my hands on but they do not cover LODs & compression and end up very blurry, can anyone help me with a detailed tutorial or some steps i should take once i have imported a skybox from 3dmax?

I followed this tutorial first and got error messages when trying to save .dds it couldn’t allocate the files, and those were 2k images from spacescape.

Then i tried the spacescape 3d max approach Unreal Engine 4 Tutorial - Custom Star Scape / Space Scape - YouTube , that worked to a degree, imported and was very blurry the tutorial did not go over LOD or Compression, i followed the tutorial and changed the settings to two sided and skybox as suggested in the tutorial then went into blueprints and linked to emissive colors and it came out blurry so then i went looking for some answers to fix it and i went back and changed the settings to nomipmaps, that did not work either i tried the compression setting nothing work still blurry.

I chose a blue space skybox, blue stars with a little blue noise. its not meant to be totally blue in images below as it was mostly black with blue stars and a little noise and importing is just blurred it.

Any help with fixing this would be greatly appreciated. I have spent 2 days trying to figure this out and its really frustrating as i want to get this sorted so i can move on to the next thing.

Imported the mesh and the textures
dd.PNG

Emissive color linked as suggested in the tutorial
Capture.PNG

unlit and two sided as suggested in the tutorial
ss.PNG

Outside the skybox

www.PNG
www.PNG822×530 209 KB

Inside the skybox

inside.PNG
inside.PNG828×558 316 KB

2

Can someone help me with my problem please, It’s one of my larger stepping stones i need to solve because its holding up my other work, and i could really use a solution to this.

I would appreciate a helpful response.

3

I know it’s a bad habit, but setting the Compression Settings of the texture itself to TC_EditorInterface makes the texture look much better with proper gradients. Also set the texture to use No Mipmaps.
Here a picture on how you should set it:

ee1a2ceb0b.png
ee1a2ceb0b.png1936×1066 165 KB

Also, make sure that the picture you imported into the engine is 8 bits and not 16 bits. The engine doesn’t seem to like 16 bits textures for some reason.

PD: Tiling the texture with a texture coordinate might help too if you made the texture tileable.

4

Thanks for that, the image has improved a lot not as blurry as before. Any advice on getting the black to pop out over the blue?

5

I think i will probably be better off with a a black and white skybox until i can figure out the colors lol

6

I don’t know what you are using to edit your textures, but I had your same problem when I imported my textures in 16 bits. Seriously, try to import them in 8 bits and you’ll see the difference.

7

I was using spacescape and 3D max to create skybox then import to UE4

8

I’m making space also… looking forward to seeing what you end up with. And yeah… 8 bit… :slight_smile:

9

I’ve been messing with Spacescape and UE4 for about 4 days now.

These settings seem to work the best:
Mip Gen Settings: NoMipmaps
Texture Group: Skybox(Cant see any difference, but just to be sure)
sRGB: FALSE <- Very important
Compression Settings: TC_UserInterface2D

This is what I get with those settings compared against the original png image from SpaceScape. Resolutions are both 4096x4096:
d0db9100369a7761210f551629bff8045872f270.jpeg

There is still one issue: Theres a huge detail loss when exporting the cubemap from Spacescape. Only fix is to export it with the HDR option enabled.
Look at this:

Acuuk7X.jpg
Acuuk7X.jpg1920×1080 102 KB

Spacescape doesnt even seem to be able to export 4096 HDR .ddr/.exr, it always crashes. Even with lower res, UE4 refuses to import the HDR .dds file.
So how in the hell can I get the same quality as in Spacescape?

Sorry if I ask a question in this thread, but it hits my problem exactly.

10

Do any of you have lighting problems when you move around to have a look inside your sky boxes?

When i go inside my sky box from a distance you cant see the stars but when you get close you can see them, Just thinking how i can light a huge solar system so the sky box is always showing the background no matter the distance.

anyone have that problem?

11

Cubemapped nebulas from spacescape are huge, I would say they are to big for what they look. And they look awesome, just too big imo.

You see there is one quite god trick to making sharp stars.

First you need to have uv mapped sphere, does not need to be seamless, but must have no stretching.

So cylindrical mapping with top and bottom surfaces is fine, or even box mapping will work.

Then you need to have bit blurry (or low res) color& brightness mask, i used 512x512 texture that i painted over uv layout i rendered from my sphere mesh.

Seams are not big problem.

Then you need one medium res texture with stars, each channel (RGBA) should have few hundreds of stars, not antialiased, they all should be sharp dots.
Well you can do antialiased if you wish. So each channel has different randomly spaced stars.

Then you make stars material:
multiply texture coordinate of each of rgba channel by 1 2 4 8 (eg. R1, g2 B4 A16) you should get quite nice randomly placed starfield without much repetition. Because of 1UV mapping used for sky sphere.

Now multiply result by your blurry color mask. You should get colored, fine and sharp stars all over your sky.

As final touch add perlin noise mask that you scroll very slowly and multpiply this with stars. But remember that effect is visible only from under atmosphere, it is not up there in space. And adjusted colors so my color mask texture was brighter and saturated more.

PS. I used cylindrical mapped sphere, then i copied one of many milky way textures to equator of my sphere texture, Painted remaining polar pieces with some random color that roughly matched seam edges.

PPS. there is also way to make nice almost spherical box that is seamless UV mapped. Make box, uv map it so it fits qubemap texture order and orientation. Then use mesh smooth on that box until it makes sphere.

PPPS:

For Lightning problem. Make sky material emmisive only. Do not use diffuse, metallic etc. there at all. Emmisive only, and change material lighting to emmisive.

Not sure if this still applies (but i think not anymore) you can always make skybox mesh to cast no shadows and be unlit, this (making mesh unlit) may be some “knowledge” that i still remember from ut3 and udk that is not valid anymore.

12

I’ve been trying hard to find info on getting a good view of space out our space station, but for all Unreal’s impressive capabilities, this is one area that where it’s failing us so far. Every tutorial is creating these space boxes that are all colourful, they don’t actually look like the vacuum of space. It’s supposed to be black, with white stars, and a few tinges of colour. In fact I’d love an accurate star map as well but I’ll settle for now for something that looks real.

Also people talk about seams showing, and compression. Is there any good option, that I could just buy? Even the ones in the marketplace look cartoonish.

I’m surprised there’s nothing already built into the engine for this. It shouldn’t be that hard should it?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

13

I saw your post from a while ago while looking for a solution to Spacescape crashing when exporting 4k HDR images and I believe I’ve found a solution (it worked for me once or twice, it might not work at all for you). Load up Spacescape and the scape you have in mind then open Windows Task Manager and in the processes tab switch the priority of Spacescape.exe to Realtime, close WTM and export the skybox using these settings

Files of type: 6 EXR files(*.exr)
Image Size: 4096
Export For: SOURCE

14

Ìf this works… you are my hero <3

15

I’m also using Spacescape for my current project. The settings @TriNityGER suggested are what Im currently using and its…OK. Not as sharp as Spacescape but usable I guess. Please let us know if you find a way to improve the export!

16

unfortunately the fix does not work on my main PC, Ill try it on my Laptop…

17

It didnt even work when I tried it again but I got 1 4k HDR export done so ¯_(ツ)_/¯. I tried running the program on a mac as well and it still crashes with 4k HDR :mad: