Sky domes

[Aeries]

Hey guys, remember me!? Y'all still love me right!? I thought so.

Here's the situation. No, it doesn't involve bad boyfriends or various colours of play dough. Basically, I am having a hell of a time understanding how to create a skydome. Granted, mapping a sphere is relatively easy. But creating a texture *from scratch* that is truly panoramic (without using any photos) is proving to be a NIGHTMARE!!!

And so I ask, how do any of you, fellow artists, go about texturing a sky dome in a clean, professional-looking manner, if one is doing it from scratch?

[CyAn1d3]

Well for starters, WELCOME BACK BUDDY!!! *hugs* 
.... ok nuff of that.

the way I learned to do so in college was to planar or sphere (though you may get a bit of distortion with the planar) map the bugger, do a gradient on the texture as a background (obviously darkest at the "center" or highest point)
and go from there. USUALLY when i do a skydome i use a half circle, with your ground extending outside the hemisphere so it does not give away the illusion that its a dome. but you NEED the gradient to simulate the horizon... so to speak.

as for your clouds, thats up to how you want to do them, using PSs cloud renderer and cutting away at it till it looks natural, or hand drawing them and then smearing them to look more natural. thats your call, it can be a pain in the arse, but play around some and see what you can come up with 

[Aeries]

Thanks for the input. My biggest issue is drawing the texture in Photoshop. Say, I draw something in PS at some huge resolution (800x5500?) so I have something I can use with the radial tool to map to a sphere. how on earth do I draw the texture so both edges come together seamlessly?

[limey BSc.]

You could create it normally, offset it by half, then blend the middle. That's the easiest way to create a tiled texture.

[CyAn1d3]

You could create it normally, offset it by half, then blend the middle. That's the easiest way to create a tiled texture.

that would be your best bet

[Aeries]

You could create it normally, offset it by half, then blend the middle. That's the easiest way to create a tiled texture.

Huuuuh?

[CyAn1d3]

make a normal texture, 1/4 the length of what you need, then the equidistant length of THAT texture apply a copy, THEN make another copy of it, reverse it, flip it or distort it in some way so it dosnt look like the original, place in blank spots, sew it together so it looks seamless and presto! almost like making a one row checkerboard, but the black is your original and the white is the changed one. 

[baz1701]

I did see a tutorial on using the clouds filter for photoshop.

Or you can just download a free skymap like the one attached.

[limey BSc.]

Huuuuh?

Next time you're on your laptop, I'll explain on MSN

[Aeries]

Oh, good, thanks Limey. I have tomorrow off work so we`ll chat then. (WOW 21 hours of overtime on this next pay period!)

I did see a tutorial on using the clouds filter for photoshop.

Or you can just download a free skymap like the one attached.

I can`t use downloaded materials for professional productions, Baz, that`s plagarism.

[CyAn1d3]

(WOW 21 hours of overtime on this next pay period!)

lucky S.O.B.....