Environment import tutorial

I just helped out lara with importing my sky map, and found it to be a lot harder than I originally thought. So I decided to write a short guide for anyone who wants to use the sky in any renders. The images are shrunk to fit on the page, click them to see full-size.

You will need:
DARK SKY 2.jpg
James textures.mat

Both are on our humyo account in the 'Sky' directory. Open the .max file that you want to put the sky into (i.e. your animation). Press M to open the material editor, then find a blank(default) material, click it, and press G to "get material" or use the button shown on the left.

Now, choose "Mtl library" where it says "Browse From:", and click 'Open'. Then go find the .mat file you downloaded, and it should have 3 materials in it. You probably want 'Gloomy Sky'.










Now this is kinda where I messed up. I thought that a .mat file would store the images and so on, but it doesnt. So you'll need to tell max, where the actual .jpg is again. To do that, scroll down on the material editor, to Bitmap parameters and click the big button to relocate the file.

Final thing to do, is set that material as an environment. Press '8' to make the Environments window appear (or find it on the toolbar under 'render'). Then drag your material over to the button that holds the environment map. You want to make an instance, that way any adits to the material will effect the one being used in the environment.

As you can see, a benefit of spherical environments, is that the reflections come out nice in close-ups. A lot of people use high quality reflections as an illusion of detail in the scene.

That instance copy thing can be useful, because I found that you can do it the other way around. You could load a .jpg into the environment button, then drag an instance into your material editor, to make it spherical, shiny, bright or whatever. For example if you want a real simple sky, just create a gradient, chuck it in the editor, make the gradient blue to white, and spherical, and thats it.