Placing a Sky In Your Map

Note the mountains in the background:



The mountains are part of a set of flat images called the sky. Those aren't real mountains, only images of mountains. Images used in this way tend to give the feeling that there's a world around the map; for instance, in my example, it appears that I have concrete blocks in the middle of a mountainous desert. I could also have concrete blocks in the middle of an ocean or concrete blocks in a big city, by changing the set of sky images used.

Let's take a generic room and add a sky to it.



If you want a sky to appear instead of a roof, simply use the tools/toolsskybox texture for the roof brush:



However, there's a small problem with this. Brushes made with the skybox texture are solid, just like normal brushes. So, if you throw a grenade at the roof of this room, it will bounce off of the skybox brush, even though the player can't see it!

A remedy for this is to extend the walls, allowing the roof to be placed higher. You don't have to extend the walls themselves; just make them taller by placing skybox brushes on top of them.





You can make a wall of sky, too, or a floor, or any brush you want.





You can also choose the sky that will be displayed. Go to the Map menu, then choose Map Properties. The SkyBox Texture Name property controls the sky that will be shown wherever there's a sky brush. To obtain a list of all sky names, open Hammer's texture browser and type skybox/ into the filter field.

Each sky requires six images, and they're named according to the part of the sky they represent (north sky, east sky, downward sky, etc.). The name of a sky is the name of its images minus the last two letters. So, I have an image named raemarslf; in order to use that sky, I would type raemars for my SkyBox Texture Name.

And, well... that's how you make a sky!