Skybox tutorial (Blender + Gimp)

I'm going to go through a quick tutorial on how to make .dds skyboxes for Space Engineers; there seems to be some desire for it.

1) Model your scene in Blender (I won't explain this).

2) Set your camera focal length to 16 in Blender. This is important, because it means exactly one sixth of the background will be rendered.



3) Render the 6 sides of the background in Blender. For a higher quality skybox, you can set the render dimensions to 2048x2048 in the rendering settings.

4) You will need the .dds plugin for GIMP. Here's a download link: https://code.google.com/p/gimp-dds/downloads/detail?name=gimp-dds-win64-3.0.1.zip

5) Unzip the plugin package and put the .exe file in the /plug-ins folder in your Gimp directory. It's usually located at /Program Files/GIMP 2/lib/gimp/2.0/plug-ins

6) Load your six renders into GIMP as separate layers. You can do any post-production here.

7) Rename the six layers to match which direction they represent (positive x, negative y, positive z, etc.) It's VERY important that you spell everything correctly. You may need to do some guess-and-check later to get the different sides lined up correctly in-game.



8) When everything is setup, you can export the .dds file. Under 'Export As' select .dds and name your file (make sure the file name has the .dds extension). Some pop-up options will be presented if you have the .dds plugin installed correctly. Pick the below options:



9) Now you'll need to make a mod package. Download the Milky Way example mod from the workshop; it's a good template. First step, replace the .dds file under /Textures/BackgroundCube/Final with your new cubemap file from GIMP.

10) You'll need to edit the Environment.sbc file in notepad; it's under /Data. The only thing you really need to change is the name of the path to your .dds file (you don't need to include the file extension). Everything else in Environment.sbc should be OK for now.

11) It's safe to load your skybox mod into Space Engineers, now. If you find the alignment of your cubemap is bad, go back into GIMP and fix rotations and layer names. If everything works, take a good screenshot to use as your thumb.jpg.

12) In the mod folder, delete modinfo.sbmi and replace thumb.jpg with your screenshot. After you've renamed your mod package with a title, you're all set.

13) Publish

 

Thanks I appreciate it.

 

Hey, is there any chance of a more step by step version of your guide for people who have never used blender before?

 

You're on your own. It took a solid day for me to teach myself blender. There's a lot to it.

Luckily there are tutorials everywhere; here's an example:

https://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/create-a-realistic-earth/#.U-vG7GP5ebg