Offhand, I'd say it has something to do with gradations in a sky color map---somehow you "pinched" it together, without any alitude restraints? Am I close?

Nope :)

Okay...are we looking down a horizontal cone, towards its' apex?

its another sky plane thingydoodle. btw, when you use photos for sky cloud things... how do you deal with their transparency? or do you just not make them transparent??

make them single-sided...

you threw a rock at the sun and it imploded...duh :)

Nope. Nope. uh...nope! :) bloodsong: I only use bit maps for cloud layers. Cloud layers don't go all the way to the horizon. (they gradually fade out, no matter what the picture) Cloud layers actually have no affect on the light that strikes the ground, so it doesn't matter if they are transparent or not. The pictures I use usually contain a mixture of clouds and their own sky, so it all looks very natural. All I have to do is set the sky gradation to match the color of the clouds at the horizon. Bitmap cloud layers tend to look best when the material is set to mirror both x and y. If not, you tend to see the seams where it's tiled. Higher altitudes also seem to look better than low. For my "Cloudshadow" planes, I only use the pre-done cloud matterials that are in Vue and have their transparency already set up. It doesn't matter what they look like (since they're not visible in the scene) only what type of shadows they cast. -SMT

My guess would be a very large cone in the sky, facing the camera, with possibly a metallic material on the cone? Well, this is cool-looking, no matter how it was done. :)

Ok, so, "none of the above" it is..... Then that leaves only, uhh, maybe you're just $@*&%#$ with us! So, Steve, what is it? How you do dat? Currently, I'm figuring Karl is closest, though it WOULD be difficult to achieve escape velocity. Must be a very aerodynamic rock. And if so, you really ought to be a Major League pitcher. ;)

LOL! You can blame Fox-Mulder for putting me in this direction :) You're actually INSIDE a sphere that has a cloud bitmap applied to both it's color AND transparency channels. The reason that it looks a bit volumetric is that the blue areas of the bit map are not completely transparent, while the white areas are not completely solid. As for the cool distortion, well, the sphere is tipped at an angle so we're actually looking at the very top apex. Everyone SHOULD know, of course, how spherical mapping distorts at its apex. In addition, I've place a 10,000 watt, white spotlight at the apex, shining directly into the scene to give the correct dramatic lighting. Simple, no? -SMT :)

dammit, i knew i've been living in a bubble all this time...

oh yeah... somebody did an explosion pic in bryce using that technique.... okay, so i can slap one of my sky images on a cloud plane? you dont scale it up to take up the whole sky? hmmmmm.... must experiment....

Smallspace- I have been experimenting with those sky domes, and while I can get the same really nice ultra-wide angle skies in Vue, I can't seem to get them to be transparent. I have tried all kinds of transparency variations, single and double sided, turning off shadows, etc. and no go... I think sky-domes have lots of potential, especially for certain types of animation where render times would be dramatically shorter. Only the characters would be rendered while moving around in a huge 3D space dome. Maybe you can come up with something more as I probably haven't really experiemented enough with it...

Oh very sneaky! So you were attempting Karl's "mapping on a sphere" challenge? Hehehe! ;)