Hey there! I'm Lander, a Sky Artist for Tripmine Studios. In this blog, our heads will be in the clouds, explaining the work the sky-department of Tripmine Studios does. Leandro (another Sky Artist) and I will show some of the work that goes on behind the scenes.Skies are an important part of every environment, and at Tripmine we put extra care into this important part of the outdoor areas. The sky is not just another asset to fill the game environment with, we view it as the scenery that contains the whole game world. The sky plays an important role in the experience of the player. The right sky in the right place can make all the difference in the world.In all of our projects (Operation Black Mesa, Guard Duty and Uplink) we try to follow a timeline so every level has the right lighting and sky. This timeline was made with the information that was available through Half-Life, Opposing Force and Blue Shift. Every level needs a different type of sky, and every type of sky needs different types of clouds. Midday skies have typical fluffy sheep clouds (cumulus mediocris) and evening skies have those long hairy clouds (cirrus clouds). We try to keep the skies consistent with each other. When you are playing through our games, you will see the change in the weather match our different cloud types and environment lighting. We think that those subtle elements can make a game more immersive.Hey I'm Leandro and I work mostly on the Operation Black Mesa skies. I will give you a small tutorial about HDR skies in general. First, let me explain why almost every custom HDR skybox is not, in fact, HDR.When you create a HDR image and save it in the wrong way, all your HDR info will be lost. Most source mods save their skies as .jpeg or .png and export it to source. But will the image have the same quality as the original HDR? No. The color information is lost forever.See what happens? Saving a .bmp (LDR) image as .pfm (HDR) is like saving a .gif (256 colors) as .bmp (millions of colors): just a waste of disk space. If you create a HDR skybox doing this, the skybox will essentially be a LDR sky with no HDR information and none of its benefits. It will behave in game just like a LDR skybox.So why is almost every custom HDR skybox is not, in fact, HDR? It is because most people just save LDR images (.tga, .bmp) as a HDR format, like .pfm! If you are a perfectionist, you render your image and save them as High dynamic range (*.hdr) instead of as .tga.Making skies the correct way will make beautiful and true HDR skyboxes.We thank you for your time and hope we can make more Dev. Blog's in the future. Also a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!