Here ya go guys. Follow this basic layout and you should be fine. You can adjust the dimensions as you see fit. The important thing is to keep the layout and the aspect ratio.
Once you have your image just upload it and you can assign it to your sky via the scene settings in the layout tool.
Thank you Sir, will try this tonight :)
Great! Let us know how it goes.
I got one in last night worked out great, no seams etc.
However, what a pain to create! I can understand using a box, but isn't there an easier way where most of the sides connect to corresponding sides?
You can view the skybox here: MESHWORX1
Just had a look, great job Loz its a really cool atmosphere.The time of day you created is one of my favorites :).
Looks great Loz! Way to go. We will eventually streamline this so that it is easier. You will be able to just assign each face of the cube individually that way you don't need to make one monster image. Will be much easier!
Thanks again for keeping us posted on your progress!
Cool and thanks :) Yeah, I placed a directional light in the right place to simulate the sun coming from the skybox.
I made another sky last night, but didn't get a chance to upload it yet. Also, I will try doing a night sky too as I don't think we have one yet and will upload both over the weekend. Will update you when they are inworld.
been xperimenting with some as well, night skies and sunsets.
Very different from sphere or dome...having to think inside the box so to speak.
That's Great Maxwell I can't wait to see them. Whats funny is part of the trick is to avoid working with the image as flat as much as possible. Its very easy to introduce seams. If you haven't set up a scene in your 3d modeling app for creating / converting skydomes to skyboxes (using the camera to render out images) I highly recommend it. With that in place it can be a mostly automated process.
Jason, I would like to suggest that you create a new experience with your template texture and let us all know why your have put +Y=Up and +Z as North? I would think it would work best to have the Skybox X,Y, Z axis match the three axes we use to position objects.
Try mine and share it if you like it: 
I am pretty sure that Up means the top of the box and down the bottom of the box and it says north is front in ( ) under north. seems pretty simple to me
yours looks more complicated
We will take a different approach in the not to distant future. With it one will upload individual images into named slots. Should help avoid loads of back and forth to photoshop.
@Mat Akkadian,
On the square that I have placed the Z (UP) on four sides, I placed the text near the edge because this allows us to know which "wall" or face of the box will touch the "Z" image that is placed at the top of the box. A second reason is that in an experience that we are visiting, and not editing, it is very hard to rotate a camera when using desktop mode to see straight up and read the text if the text were in the center of the square. Try it and you will see. If you were to place things on the "UP" square you would want to know how to rotated the image to match the walls.
I gave the skybox texture creation a shot today and found the layout/uv map most confusing. A seamless texture created seams on the top/ceiling edges, no matter how I rotated that one. I must be missing something.
I have made some skyboxes in the past that had a much more intuitive layout. Like.... just a cube unwrapped in a conventional way. I read above changes will be made and I welcome them... a lot! I ended up with a pretty nice sky (from scratch this time to avoid seams) but it wasn't a piece of cake at all. Me thinking, hmmm, it's a Sunday, let's do something simple, lol.
There's a secret in automated skybox creation....you see..there are tools/utilities that can do the cutting and stitching automatically for you.... my favorite is Pano2VR ... there are many others too..do your research.
Bluebell,
See the post from Jason who says the method for uploading sky boxes will be changed.
I hear that message from Jason with some apprehension as the issue for me is the vocabulary used to communicate what each face will be in your scene. At this point, it is unclear if we can all agree what each face should be called. And the new method will help.
The potential advantage of what Jason proposes is that regardless of what a face is called, when you see it wrong in your scene, you will be able to use your eyes to guide your decision of what to change about the chosen texture or the orientation of the texture. Then it will no longer be a philosophical discussion of whether Front is North or whether Z is Up.
@ Ethos: yes, I read that, as I wrote in my post, and am eager to see any new method. It is not just that I did not find it a walk in the park, if I found it kinda hard, others will too. I am not in a rush and will get it probably sooner then later. I found your template helpful, the text is positioned just right.
@ Agustine: I will look into that. I did work with sky-boxes and am familiar with tools that can make textures for them even, but the UV was just more intuitive. So yes I did my research, long ago, maybe I have to get more up to date on tools that work for Sansar-like platforms. I did not want to come across as a lazy one.
In the end I got a nice result as I do understand the basics and drew my own texture in PS. I am good at finding work-around's but not everyone may be. Also, I am all for using cubes, not spheres, it saves a lot of resources.
After all, the cube has less polys... its very easy to hand draw design your own skies..start as 12288x6144 then once done reduce to 6144x3072 ..after that use Pano2VR to automatically cut/stitch your sky...
So eager to test and will do in the morning, ty for your advice!
@Agustine, isn't the height 2048 (not 3072)?
When I was putting together a skybox a while back, I figured out that the current layout is incorrect. It's been a bit so don't quote me on this... but I believe what I did was to swap North and South and to rotate Up 90 degrees counter clockwise.
I'm definitely in favor of changing the skybox template, but if you need a new skybox asap, this may do it for you. :)
I'm a little surprised it didn't favor a linear connection like a long panorama through, say, N>E>S>W>Sky>Floor. But I think the separated textures will make more sense, too.
Galen,
The separated textures make things easier to deal with.
This issue all started when the Sansar team produced a template seen at the beginning of this thread that called +Y up and -Y down. It also called +Z North when it should have been Up. so, from my point of view it all started when their own template was never corrected. It could be argued that +X is west only if +Z were not North. And +X would only be West if -Y were North. The confusion all stated in September of 2016 and should have been corrected, but the Sansar team simply did not evaluate their own template in the same way that the creators did by applying it to a skybox.
Sansar didn't need to change the system, they only needed to re-publish a corrected template.
@Kallah ..yes, sorry about confusion...was quite tired that day..
Hello everyone! Jason, thank you so much for the template. I thought I would add my 5 cents based on my own experience.
I wanted to learn more about making Sansar sky boxes, as I would love to design my own in the future, but to do that I needed to try with some images I found free online (only 512 resolution, looks way too low to to use in Sansar anyways), just to try.
I have calculated 6:1 ratio of it, created a new image sized 6 x 1024, with 1024 high (mind you, I have lost on the resolution there, as the original images were 512 px), copied images using the template, and aligned in a new image in Photoshop, converted all to HDR 32 bits image, exported with open exr with choosing no compression .
Being very skeptical about my first sky box creation, I have attempted an upload, and it worked! I have applied the skybox and it worked also, with one small issue - some of the images I have used needed to be flipped horizontally, and I need to find a way to fix the lighting in the images..
Augustine: would Pano2VR be able to equalise the image? - looks like a neat program, too many tutorials, can you link one thats relevant to here? THANK YOU!
Also, I presume 2048 would be acceptable resolution for VR, or should we aim higher than that? So the bottom line is, my first skybox looks .. close to it but.. not good, but I have learned the up and down are at fairly odd spot, which breaks your design up, not sure if I like it, but it is what it is..
Posting this message I was hoping it would be helpful to someone experimenting like me..:-)
Ava,
I hope you are successful with your experiments. I was unable to use the template that was provided by Jason.
I encourage you to read this bug report related to the axis in Sansar. https://help.sansar.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115018240063-Vector-Direction-axis-swapped-
The discussion of vectors is very technical. And later in that discussion I offer my own observations related to the way we move objects using values that are entered in the object properties. The observed axis are different than the skybox template would make us think.
Ethos, thank you very much, successful, no.. There must be! an easier way to it. You are discussing an axis in relations to what? So, will that mean, we will only able to build properly, as far I know Sansar was meant for creativity, not to save the world.. I am sure we will figure if out! I will keep trying.. And Yes, I will read , if it will help anyone else attempting:-)
Ava, I am discussing an axis that we observe when we move objects in the edit mode. And I think that Galen and Gindipple are discussing the vectors used to report on avatar orientation and the movement of an avatar with a C# script. Those vectors may also be used to move (translate) objects using C# scripts.
I trust you will consider all aspects, of the originals of our new and old members..And I am happy to help out Galen and Gindipple with experimenting space"-) It is no secret, to share the skills, is it? And Yes, I was successful at my first sky box attempt... Ugly but possible:-)
Ava, congrats on the skybox! This process will improve. Just hang in there.
thanks,
Jason
A suggestion, try to make each side of your skybox 600px, not 1024 or higher. The reason?
Because part of what takes an experience so long to load is the larger textures, as in larger than the usual 512 we experience in SL. You can test this when you change the skybox to others you have in your inventory. Ones that haven't been loaded take quite a bit of time to come in. I believe this is part of the reason, along with every other texture being 600 or more, for places to load. Some experiences are so intense that people loose patience and don't bother to wait it out.
If at all possible, keep all of your textures down to 600 and expect load times to take longer accordingly. It's nice to be able to do 1024 or higher but try to keep future visitors in mind, many of whom may not have as good a graphics card as others.
I made some skyboxes years ago in a program called Terragen, you can do a web search for it, it's free but you cannot sell the results.