HDR Skybox Creation

[Yossarian]

Hey everyone. I have a bit of an issue with creating HDR skyboxes, specifically splitting them. I have created the skybox, arranged them appropriately in a 2048x1536 texture file, sent the file through HDRShop and saved the file as .PFM, which is where the problem arises. Whenever I drag and drop the .PFM, the tool (splitskybox.exe) simply crashes. I receive the Windows Error dialog, so I am starting to speculate it may not have anything to do with the tool itself, but something that is interfering with the conversion.

Regardless, I’ve went through the HDR Skybox Creation tutorial dozens of times, each time thoroughly, I’ve refreshed the Source SDK content as well as completely re-downloaded it, yet the problem still remains. I was curious if anyone has successfully converted an HDR Skybox yet? Any assistance you guys can provide will help me help you, as the purpose of this is to release a pack of approximately ~23 hi-quality HDR skyboxes for anyone to use. Anyway, thanks in advance!

[hessi]

i will look up for a skybox i made and test the tool my self. i used to crop the pfm manually (which takes a bit time but before the last sdk update there was no splittool)

i will post asap.

edit: yap it crashes here too. what you can do:

0. save your sky as MySky_all.pfm and maybe make a backup!

1. make a selection in hdr shop from PX (0,512) to PX (511,1023)

2. go to the menu: image -> crop

3. go to the menu: save as -> pfm -> MySky_hdrft.pfm

4. open up the pfm you saved in step 0.

5. select the next part of the skybox and so on.

you have to work EXACTLY on pixels. a tipp: at the bottom of hdr shop there is a text called PIXEL #NUMBER #NUMBER that shows you the actual pixel your cursor is on. while source needs 512² textures you have to pay really attention while selecting the parts of your sky. so i recommend you to not drag the corners. better you make a rough selection and fix all 4 border edges each for its self. so you can be sure it will align correctly (watching those pixel values at the bottom)

here are pixel ranges:

front: upper left (0,512) lower right (511, 1023)

left: upper left (512,512) lower right (1023, 1023)

back: upper left (1024,512) lower right (1535, 1023)

right: upper left (1536,512) lower right (2048, 1023)

up: upper left (1536,0) lower right (2048, 511)

down: upper left (1536,1024) lower right (2048, 1535)

i know it is a crappy workflow but valve did the same way before so you have to do it like they do ;( 23 skies is a load. so make sure your skies do not need any tweaking or you have to re-crop all over again