how to get clouds on the *bottom* of the skybox?

#1 Achieved the effect I wanted with a waterblock, if anybody else is looking for something like this

#2 And I was just about to say that you can change the height of animated clouds in the editor which reference the clouds in the sky.dml files.

#3 Yes, but when I use negative numbers for the height, the "clouds" disappear.

#4 Hmmm, could you lift your scene/terrain higher?
e.g. terrainblock position = "-1024 -1024 100";
And maybe alter your height on the mission boundary (red square in the editor - forgotten it's proper name)

EDIT: scrub that idea, just tried it and it doesn't work. Seems that you can't have clouds lower than the camera.

#5 Yes, clouds aren't actually rendered as physical objects with a world position. They're just always rendered on the top of the skybox.

I assume you could add code to the skybox to add animated textures to the bottom of the box... I might actually look into doing that... eventually...

#6 hmmm, you could always make a DTS plane (as in flat surface not aircraft!) and animate a moving texture using IFL.

I had that idea whilst thinking on how to get a moving fog over a floor (like dry ice) though I haven't tried to implement it yet.

#7 I'd just do dry ice with particles, if it was a relatively small area. If I wanted a really huge area, I'd look into the fxReplicators - dry ice on the floor could use kind of a similar effect to grass, but you'd have to add some movement.

Oh yeah, on topic :P - I guess IFL would work, but to get smooth movement over a large area, wouldn't you have to have lots of frames?

#8 I was thinking more of having multiple polys on a plane - like a grid, and then a single, tiling cloud texture which would then animate.

It'd be easier with TGEA (which I'm using) as that comes with some shaders which move/run, rotate, wave, etc so IFL wouldn't be needed, you can just scroll the texture.

I know you guys are using TGE, hence the IFL idea.

#9 The water block is working very well. I decided to have the plane flying over the ocean rather than land, because to make the aerial photo the right size it would need to be around 1024x1024 pixels, which will likely drag down performance. I created a water texture with scaled down waves, so even though the plane is only 200 meters above the water, you feel like you're much higher.
Screens:

I personally find this effect incredibly beautiful for not using shaders

#10 Looking good! Very last level of CoD4!

#11 Like the screens a lot, reminds me of some of my favorite CS 1.6 custom maps. I'm guessing you've got the current speed up pretty high so it appears as though you're flying?

Do you think a waterBlock or cloud effect is how they did the effects of ground moving under a train in unreal2k4 (like the assault level in the demo)? I've always wondered how they managed that, or do you think they wrote their own system to mimic the ground moving?

#12 @Steve: Yes, that was actually what I based the level on :-) My tester friend wanted to see close combat. He meant REALLY close combat, to the point where I needed to implement a knife feature. The seats provide plenty of places to hide (for the enemies as well, yes they are smart enough to do that :-D ), and there is also an upper deck. At the moment, I'm designing an airfield level which encourages the player to be stealthy to show the enemies' hearing, hunting ability, etc. The airfield requires the player to sneak on board the plane while it is on the tarmac or face waves and waves of enemy soldiers, so it actually establishes a reason to assault a plane while it is in the air, rather than on the ground.

#13 @Morrock: I've never played Unreal, but I understand what you're saying from my experience with some other games. I have no idea how continuosly moving backgrounds are achieved up close in levels like that. In my level, I'm counting on the fact that the water is far away to avoid using too much detail and sucking up performanc