Game Level Design II 5

The final touch of our level it'll be the sky. The simplest way is to use the "World" function of Blender ( image above). If not done yet, go to the "World buttons" and in the "World" panel, press the "new" button. Then, choose a color for the sky in the left rectangular slot. Only plain colors will work.

Another way is to use a "skydome", an "UV Sphere" object half cut.
Here's how to do it:
Add a "UV sphere" to the scene, with "Segments:16" and "Rings:12". Scale it a little bigger than the level, and, once again, but only the "Z" value this time, to get a shape, more or less, like the one in the image above, at "1".
Enter "Edit mode", "Vernice mode", select the vertices of the lower left halve sphere, and delete them. Now, go to "UV FAce Select" mode, "F" key, then "Tab" key, to enter "Edit mode" ( easier to select faces), and select the top two row of faces, "2".
Back to "UV Face Select" mode, "Tab" key, assign a "deep blue" color to the faces, with the "Set VertCol" button, "3", and repeat these operations for the other two pair of rows, choosing a "light blue" and a "pink" colors, "4".
To smooth the colors rows, select all faces, enable the "Shared" button, and, press the "Copy Draw" one.
"7", shows the result in "Game mode".

Yet another technique to make a sky, but, this is a new, and quite exciting one. A little revolution to Blender "One Person Game Maker" users!
I insist! With the new "Bake" tool, no more the need of a graphics manipulation program, like "The Gimp". Everyone can make, inside Blender, in a easy way, nice textures ( and quite realistic).
I'll show you how! Using the same "skydome" object, as in the previous step ( just assign a "white" color to all faces), enter "Edit mode" and in "Edge" mode, select all the "segment loops" as in the image above at "1" ( press Shift-Alt keys while selecting an edge to select the entire loop). Then do "Ctrl-E" keys, and choose "Mark Seam" in the "Edge Specials" menu. The "yellow" selected edges become "orange" color.
In "UV Face Select" mode, select all faces, press "U" key and choose "Unwrap", in the "UV Calculation" menu. Th" "UV Editor" should look more or less like in the image above, "1", at right.
Now, in the "UV Edit" window header, in the "Image" menu, choose the "New" item, and accept the default parameters. A "black texture image" appear, named "Untitled", that you should save somewhere in your hard-drive in PNG format ( "Image menu - Save As").
Now add a material to the "skydome", set "Spec:" to "0", "Hard:" to "1", "Emit:" to "0.050", create a new texture, in the "Texture Type" field, choose "Clouds", in the "Colors" panel, enable "Colorband", set the "Cur:0" to "white" color and "A" "1.00"; and the "Cur:1" to a "light blue" color, more or less as in "2", in the image above.
Add a "lamp" to the scene ( centered with the sphere center), set "Dist:" to a big number ( 2000?), reselect the "skydome", do "Ctrl-Alt-B" keys, and, in the "Bake Selected Meshes" menu, choose "Full Render". The "clouds texture" should appear in the "UV Editor" window, "3".
In "4", you can see the result of the "bake" method, in "Game mode".

Now, finally, the "classic" technique, a clouds image, "UV mapped" to a sphere/globe.
The more realistic one, probably. If you could find/get 360° sky images, the result it'll be near the perfection. In this tut I'll use a "standard" sky photo.
With the "3D cursor" at the center, add a "Plane" to the scene ( in a different layer, maybe). Then, enter "UV Face Select mode" and load the "ciel_nuages_512x512.jpg" image. This image is already "prepared" to use with this sky technique, but if you use one of your own, you must make the image "vertically seamless", in other words, the image could be repeated in the horizontal direction, without glitches, "side 1" being the "following" of "side 2" in the image above. The zone in "3" should be colored by a "plain color".

Enter "Edit mode", select all vertices and "Subdivide Multi", with a "Number of Cuts:9". Then, place the "3D cursor" at "Z:-1.00" ( use the "View Properties" floating panel as in the image above).
In front view ( important), do "Shift-W" keys, to activate the "warp" tool ( "1" in the image above), move your mouse while pressing "Ctrl" key, check the "header" bar "Warp:" value, and "stop/left mouse button" click when "180.00" is reached ( "2"). "3" shows the plane after the "warp" tranformation.

Now, in side view ( keypad "3"), repeat the "warp" transform, as in the previous step, but, now, to a "360.00" value ( image above at left). Press the "RemDoubles" button, and the "FlipNormal" too.
Your object should look like the one in the image above at right, in "Textured Shading" mode.

In "Edit mode, in "Front view", select the vertices of the left halve sphere ( "1" in the image above), and, delete them. In the "UV Editor", select all the vertices, and scale them to "Y:2.00" ( use "Ctrl" to snap to grid). Then, move then along the "Y" axis to "D:-128.00" ( to fit the editor's "active area").
Finally scale them along "X" axis to "2.00" ( "3" in the image above).
It's done, your sky should be just beautiful...I hope.

Here's our village level with the new sky object ( image above, after sky object rotation and sizing)!

Here's a "screenshot" of the level at its final state, while running in "Game mode". I guess, that, it's a quite nice one, considering that only 1.486 vertices are used ( and the .blend file is 750Kb, good for the web plugin, if it'll work).
Download the final version.