Sky Walker Help File

Overview

Sky Walker takes a TGA file and makes all 6 files required to make a sky cube for Motocross Madness. The only thing requred is a good picture and 2 things from the Rainbow Studios Sky Cube example. You need the MakeCub program and the INI file. You can get them here. Select "Download Samples" and get the Sky Cube Sample.

Instructions

Before you begin

It is fairly simple using this program and Rainbow Studio's MakeCub.exe to create a sky cube. The key component is good picture selection. You should look for a picture that can be sized to 504x504, 1008x504 or 2016x504. The lower half of the picture that you end up with will not be visible in the game so you can actually paste a 504x300 picture into a 504x504 and still get good results. It is also important to keep the color count low (thanks to Grolschie for this tip). It appears that a lot of video cards will show white spots in MCM when a picture with a high color count is used as a texture or skycube. It appears that the MakeTerr and MakeCub try to come up with 256 colors to use. So make it's job easier by reducing the color count of your picture.

What it does with your picture

Once you have a picture, SkyWalker will load up that picture and make the other four walls from it.

If it's a 504x504 picture it will become the north and south wall. The picture will be mirrored and that will become the east and west walls.

If it's a 1008x504 then that will become the west and north walls. SkyWalker will then mirror the north wall onto the east wall and mirror the west wall onto the south wall.

If it's a 2016x504 then it will take the right most 257 pixels and left most 257 pixels and make the west wall with a seam in the middle. It will then use the rest of the picture to make the north, east, and south walls.

SkyWalker then walks each wall and takes a triangle out of the top and flips it onto the sky.

This leaves you with seamless edges and you only should have to touch up the sky piece and maybe use a clone brush and touch up some areas that might look to much like it's mirrored right near the edge. On the 2016 width picture you will need to touch up the seam in the middle of the west wall.

Skywalker saves all 6 files that MakeCub.exe expects into the same directory as the picture that you selected.

Build it

To build the cube all you need is MakeCub and the ini that comes in the RainbowSample.

  1. Just make a directory for your cube
  2. put your original 504x504, 1008x504, or 2016x504 TGA file in it
  3. Save the rainbow cube ini and give it the name of your skycube
  4. Run SkyWalker and open up your TGA file.
  5. Touch up any of the pictures as necessary.
  6. Run MakeCub and select your INI.
  7. Copy skycube to Nationals directory.
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Support

I hope everyone finds this program useful.I would love to hear what your thoughts are. Please send me your suggestions.

Visit my web site for any future updates:

http://people.ne.mediaone.net/bruceatk/fatnastycross.html

If you have problems with this program please e-mail me at bruceatk@mediaone.net

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