Adding a Skybox and Sunlight

Creating a skybox and adding sunlight is fairly easy. It would be impossible (and you really shouldn't) to light a large outdoor area with light entities. Besides you wouldn't get any shadows.

First you should create a box about 2048 x 2048 x 2048, textured with caulk.

Now select the ground face inside the skybox, (Ctrl + Shift + Click). Give this a nice grass or similar texture.

Select the remaining 5 faces inside the skybox in the same fashion. Find a nice pretty sky and texture them with that (write "sky" in the little text box and the id and press enter to bring up all available sky textures). (thanks, Bjrane(:redface:]]

Now with that done place an info/player/start into your map somewhere.

Next for the sunlight. Select a brush of the skybox and deselect it. Press 'n' to pull up the entity screen. 'Worldspawn' should be selected, and in the key/value boxes, write: suncolor/70 70 70.

So you should have:

This sets the color of the sun as follows:

(red) (green) (blue)

70 70 70 will give you a nice high noon look with white light. Lower the values to lower the intensity of the light. Experiment with different color values to create a redish sunset, or an ice blue early morning.

Next, set this key/value:

This places the sun as follows:

(pitch) (angle) (roll)

• The pitch controls the height at which the sun is at. So for high noon you could have -90 or for a sunset you could have -15.
• The angle controls which direction the sun is in. So you could set it so its in the east if the map takes place in the morning.
• The roll is self explanatory. Don't worry about as a sun is round and you won't notice a difference. Just leave it at 0.

If you want a nice blinding effect when loking at the sun add a key/value of:

If not add:

That's about it for sunlight and skyboxes. Just experiment around with sun angles and colors to see what fits your needs.