The link already posted in this thread tells
you exactly that.
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/visual_arts/19981023/skybox_05.htm
Oh, one other thing, where can I get an eval of Bryce? The version on Corel’s site costs $200 !!!
I found an old evaluation release of Bryce 2 at ftp://ftp.ogo.ru/pub/cooler.irk.ru/BRYCE/bryce2.zip
It doesn’t seem to save the rendered images though. That however, doesn’t stop one from taking screen shots and cropping the results.
[This message has been edited by DFrey (edited 12-09-2000).]
If you want a very capable and FREE program
for generating sky boxes (or any kind of
high-quality 3D scenes) try Persistence of
Vision. It has a very capable scene
description language (unfortunately, it’s
left-handed, so you’ll have to swap your Z
when thinking about it 
There’s also a shareware modeler for Windows
called Moray, although last I checked it
didn’t do meshes very well.
Setting up a script to render a scene with
90 degree FOV in six directions for using in
a skybox is child’s play using POV-Ray. http://www.povray.org/
Post-scriptum, not intended as an attack on
anyone personally:
It has been said that the problem of piracy
is that it hurts the small developer and
solidifies the market leader. After all, if
you steal some software, because “you cannot
afford the price of the market leader,” you
will steal the market leader’s software
(might as well steal the biggest).
If stealing was just not an option, period,
then the people who can’t afford the biggest
would buy some cheaper solution, typically
from some smaller developer. Thus, piracy
(stealing) hurts the little guys the most.
A very good, semi-free terrain rendering tool that you should also look into is Terragen (Planetside Software – The home of Terragen – Photorealistic 3D environment design and rendering software.).
- Tom
Oh, to that glittering of the stars. You could scale the texture map to be half as big in either direction. It will definetely glitter, and you won’t have to big textures. You could also make that resolution dependent.
Could you render Skyboxes with terragen now? I got version 0.81 and I didn’t find something like that.
Originally posted by Kilam Malik:
Could you render Skyboxes with terragen now? I got version 0.81 and I didn’t find something like that.
Any 3D app that allows you to move and rotate the camera can be used to render skyboxes. I don’t think I’ve ever actually tried this in Terragen, but I did succesfully do it in Bryce and Vistapro, so I don’t see why Terragen should be any different. I’ll be sure to check, though 
- Tom
Would sky domes look better than sky boxes?
If so, how could I export the dome modeled in Bryce?
Not really. If you have enough texture
resolution for your skybox, there should be
very minimal distortion. Even a 256x256x6
skybox looks pretty good in 800x600 with
linear texture interpolation.
If you’re currently calling glClear to clear
your color buffer to black (or something)
consider putting your skybox drawing code
there instead (since it’ll overdraw the
entire screen). Turn off depth testing when
you draw it, and just draw it as a unit cube.
Then call glClear() with depth and stencil
buffer bits and start rendering the rest of
your scene.
Works like a charm for me, and took all of
an hour to implement, 30 minutes of which was
getting the textures to look nice in POV 