How to make Skybox (Cube) from 360 panorama view

[Buggie]

A want mention another topic: 360° SkySphere for Mappers
However there exists some problems, with use single Equirectangular projection texture for skybox.
Equirectangular projection must be in ratio 2:1. So you limited to 4096 on biggest side.
This also can cause troubles for users, which limited in maximal resolution. They will load mimaped version of it, and it goes be worse from cube skybox.
And spheres itself is complicated BSP which can affect other map, add here cuts or BSP bugs.
Sky cube is more convenient solution for this.

For get sky cube from your Equirectangular projection you can use service: Panorama to Cubemap
After you done, resize your cube side textures to size which be power of 2. Like 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096. And use on your map.

For skybox best if set bUnlit and bNoSmooth. Last one prevent make cube edges visible. Or at least make it less visible.

There example of it. It use 1024 size of sky box. Also it use BC2 compressed mipmaps, for preserve full colors.
Example based on examples from topic above.

SkyCube-test.7z

This example use 6 textures of 1024x1024 each.
When original use one texture 4096x2048.

So there still possible use textures of 4096x4096 size for cube, if you want x4 more details.

As source for Equirectangular projection (360 view), can be used AI generated skybox from https://skybox.blockadelabs.com/

[Berserker]

https://matheowis.github.io/HDRI-to-CubeMap/
This is another great alternative, which I use sometimes.

[Buggie]

More examples:

[Red_Fist]

So a skybox texture, should Not, be imported with mip maps ?

[Barbie]

So a skybox texture, should Not, be imported with mip maps ?

Mipmaps are used for views from different distances. Because the view distance to a skybox is always the same, I guess that no different resolutions of the texture are needed.

See also thread "To Mipmap or not to Mipmap that is the question."

[Buggie]

Any texture more then 256 on any side (512+ typically) would crash 436 editor.
So by this reason you need use mipmaps.

Also mipmaps is subject of change, not by different distance, but field (angle) of view (FOV).
If you not provide mipmaps, it use bad sampling methods, which look bad on some FOV.

Keep in mind, FOV can be different, and it not static.
For example use sniper scope change FOV.

So rule of thumb - use mipmaps always, except not scaled GUI elements, which less or equal from 256 on all sides.

But even for GUI elements, HUD/GUI scale can be applied. And if so, additional resolution can be useful.

[PrinceOfFunky]

https://matheowis.github.io/HDRI-to-CubeMap/
This is another great alternative, which I use sometimes.

Cubemaps can also be generated in uscript but, unless the resolution is high, you're gonna get a low quality cubemap.

[Red_Fist]

With all this in mind, on the map that I am doing-finishing right now, (for 3 years, lol) but I used an 8 sided cylinder and 512 per side. It is still not near as clear as the original photograph.
So I was wondering and not being an oxymoron, but is there some type of cube mapping type of program that can have more than 4 walls ?

Making them seamless gets down into using the clone tool at like one or two pixel zoom to blend it, it doesn't look too bad if I could resample down and still have it clear though. Is why I used 8 friggen sides, and it's just not clear or see muddy pixels and not using the NoSmooth just make the pixels nice and square.

Also this map doesn't seem to bother, but it would be cool to have it like the original photo, it is a photo of the Badlands, USA and carved it up and edited it before I shrunk things. So I did all that I could do other than using even more sides.