In the following tutorial you will learn how to make a totally new SkyBox, or Worldsphere, for Max Payne. Before I start the tutorial, please read the following disclaimer.
Only 3dSMax R3.1 to R4 have the capability to export a 3D mesh into the Max Payne format (.kf2).
You should know at least the basics of Photoshop and 3dSMax.
If you just want to manipulate an existing skybox texture and re-use it, then this tutorial is not for you.
The methods used in the following tutorial are entirely my own concept. If anyone finds it to be incorrect at any part then please mail me. I’ll try to correct it.
Max Payne doesn't support animatable Skyboxes. I’ve tried all the possible ways to export animations (whether it’s for the mesh or for the texture), but it’s of no use.
I won’t be responsible if this tutorial crashes your system or causes some major losses to your PC. So USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.
First make a sphere perfectly at the centre of all the viewports. To make sure it is at the centre, select it, then click on the move button
on the tool bar and then right click on it one more time. A “move transform type-in” window will open. 
Now in all the co-ordinates under the “Absolute:World” section, put “0” and close the window. Now your sphere is perfectly at the centre of every viewport. To increase or decrease the number of polygons or even the size of the mesh, firstly go to the “Modify” tab at the right-most corner of the screen.
Then below that, change the settings as showed in the picture below (do it right now but after you learn it well, change it according to your needs).
[NOTE:- I used the radius to be 20,000 units because Remedy used perfectly that big of a mesh with 32 segments for the “Sunset” skybox.] After that, click the "Modifier List"
drop-down menu. A list of many modifiers will be shown in a categorical way among which, click the “Edit Mesh” modifier under the “Mesh Editing” category. Now in the sub-object level, select “Polygon” and select the total lower hemisphere of the sphere in the front viewport, leaving the top-most series of polygons.
Now delete these polygons. You’ll be asked whether you want to delete isolated vertices or not. The answer would be “Yes”. Click that red square once again to come out of sub-object level. Now we are ready with our sky-dome mesh. But something is really missing in the mesh. Yes, we will be seeing the skydome from inside, so it’s faces should be flipped inwards.So select the mesh once again and bring down the modifier list. In the modifier list, click the “Normal” modifier under “Mesh Editing”. Then check “Flip Normals” and your sky-dome should look something like this. Modelling the sky-dome is ready.
Now we have to make a ground where the sky would meet at the horizon.Go to the Objects menu and select “Plane”. Now draw out a more or less equal sided plane in the top viewport, which would be slightly bigger than the diameter of the sphere.
[NOTE: We won’t need to flip the faces of the plane. Since it will be the ground, we are going to see it from the top while in-game.]
Now move the plane in the front viewport down so that it is just above the lower-most margin of the sky-dome like in the picture below. As far as there is no leakage at the joining parts of the meshes, it’s perfectly ready.
[NOTE: The main reason why I used a plane for the ground instead of keeping the sphere is that, I wanted to keep the polygon count as low as possible.And since I’m making a dark night sky, the ground wouldd be perfectly dark.So there’s no necessity of keeping a lot number of stupid polygons over there.]
If I were to use a non-cloudy texture, then my modelling would have been ended at this particular moment.But clouds are far more lower than the sky. So now I need to squash the total skybox to make it of lower height. Firstly select both the sky-dome and the plane by dragging out a rectangle with the select tool in the front viewport.
Now keep pressing the “Uniform Scale tool” in the main toolbar for a moment or two and some other tools would drop down. From the list select “Non-uniform Scale”.
A pop-up will ask you whether to continue or not. Press “yes” in it. Now scale them just like I’ve shown in the following pictures . Now move the skybox slightly downward so that the grid centre lies just a bit above the plane.
[NOTE: I did the previous move because by default while exporting into Max Payne’s (.kf2) format, the grid centre is regarded as the pivot centre of the skybox, if not specified.]
Okay now we are perfectly ready with our modelling part. Next we will go to the texturing part.
[NOTE :- To understand how the texturing is affecting the mesh, we will put a camera inside the skybox and change the “Perspective” viewport to that Camera. If you are unsure about placing the camera, Don’t Panic! Learn it from the official help file.Only while exporting the skybox, we’ll delete this camera because its purpose would be served at that time.]
Firstly select the sphere used as the sky and press “M” to open up the Material Editor. Now rename the first material to “Sky” and press the “Standard” button beside it and then select “KF Material” within it. Let the “Basic Parameters” as it is. Come to the “Textures” section and press the “None” button beside it’s written “Diffuse”. Now a list will come and from there you are to select “KF Texture”.Now press the blank button beside it’s written “Bitmap” in the “Basic Parameters”. Now browse on to the “CloudySky.jpg” we just made in Photoshop.After that click the “Go To Parent” button to go to the root directory of the material.
Leave the “Opacity” as it is. Check "Reflection" and change its type from the drop down list to "Additive" and again press the “None” button beside it. Once again select the “CloudySky.jpg” through the exact process we did with the “Diffuse” texture. Come again to the parent directory. After that check "Lit" and change its type from the drop down list to "Environment". After that the “Textures” panel of your Material Editor should look something like this.
Then drag and drop the material shown in the sphere in the Material Editor to the Hemisphere in the viewport. Now make another similar material and name it “Ground”.For its texture I used a simple black 2 * 2 pixel bitmap and named it Black.jpg. Then once again drag and drop the material on to the plane in the viewport. Is there any problem you are having? YES, there ought to be problem, that is the materials are not showing up properly in the viewport. For the material to show up, you must first give a “UVW Map” modifier to the Sky mesh as well as the ground mesh.
[NOTE: The KF Texture has no texture tiling option. So we would only be able to tile the texture properly with the help of the “UVW Map” modifier.]
Close the Material Editor. Now select the sphere and go to the “Modify” panel and open up the modifier list once again. In the modifier list under “UV Coordinate Modifiers”, you’ll find “UVW Map” modifier.
Select it and under its parameters, select “Shrink Wrap”. There you’ll also see U tile, V tile and W tile. Try altering those values for the sky to make the tiling perfectly of your wish. I used 5, 5 and 5 as its value. That was quite okay for me. So now you can easily see the clouds being tiled on the sky in your viewport camera. Try rotating the camera to see how it looks at all parts of the sky mesh. Now you have to do the exact same thing for the ground mesh of the sky. But instead of “Shrink Wrap” use a “Planar” tile and utterly any value for the U, V and W tilings.That’s it, the total construction procedure is over. Now the only thing which is left is the exporting.
Before we would export the skybox, we should delete the camera we created for looking at the tiling effect of the skybox. Then go to File>Export.
[NOTE: Don’t use “Export Selected” or the whole thing won’t export. ]
Now in the “Save as Type” drop down, select “KF Exporter(*.kf2)”. In the “File name”, type on “Cloudy” and click on “Save”. An Export Option window will open.
Now in the Export Option window, check only the “Geometry” and the “Materials”. Also don’t forget to check the “Re-Scale” and its value to “0.01”. You should also check the “Copy textures to export path” option. Lastly press “OK” and you are done with your skybox modelling, texturing and exporting process.
Lastly put the “Cloudy.kf2” and its adjacent “textures” folder into the “data\database\worldspheres” folder. Then edit the WorldSpheres.txt and add the following text either at the beginning or at the end so you can find it out easily:-
[Cloudy] // My self-made WorldSphere
{
[Geometry]
ExportData = Cloudy.kf2;
}
Then in the levels.txt in the “data\database\levels” folder put Cloudy in the part where the name of your previous worldsphere was written. After that you are done. Go compile your level and play on to see your just made new skybox.
Endo…………..for providing the maximum number of modelling tutorials to newbie Max Payne modders. I really got the tutorial writing enthusiasm after seeing Endo posting so many tutorials at MPHQ.
SamiV (3drealms forum)……………..for showing us the way that animation is possible in a Max Payne skybox.
Further on, Sami Vanhatalo of Remedy Entertainment confirmed in the 3dRealm’s Max Payne Modding Forum that Animation is surely possible in Worlspheres in Max Payne. The correct way to do it is:-
While Exporting
Also check the “Animation” and the “Loop When Finished” check box.
In The Text Edits
Type the following down (if you have made an animation with the given skybox)
{
[Geometry]
ExportData = Cloudy.kf2;
[Animation]
Index = 0;
Filename = Cloudy.kf2;
}
Thanks A Lot to SamiV for that information.
So what else could be better than this. Go on and add that extra “Eye-Candy” animation to your already-made Skybox. Till Max Payne 2, Good Bye.
And don’t forget to mail me questions or suggestions about this tutorial.