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Description
I've been interested in the possibility of converting normal MMD skydomes (or at least their textures) into functional Raycast skyboxes that produce a working lighting environment. But to make a skybox for Raycast , you need to start with an HDR/HDRI image that has...a LOT more data in it than the standard .png or .jpg that most normal skydomes use!
A little while ago, I came across a tutorial for creating HDR images out of regular, standard images. I thought it sounded like the perfect solution, apart from the fact that it was meant for photographs one could take with a camera, and involved heavy use of GIMP which I am really not familiar with!
I chose a regular skydome that I thought would look interesting as a potential lighting environment. After much trial and error, and going back and forth between GIMP and Paint.net to play with the shadows/brightness/contrast on copies of the original texture and create the necessary overexposed and underexposed "photographs" required by the tutorial, I managed a result that I was satisfied with and saved it as an HDR file. Then I converted into this fully functional Raycast skybox.

I must confess, I had been hoping to get a night sky with an area of red-orange glow included in the diffuse or specular lighting from the lava. Unfortunately, it wasn't as strong as I'd hoped and I had to give it a little help with a Disk Light. The moon ended up being the dominant light source from the skybox. BUT the skybox is at least working and reflecting as a skybox should, so that part of this experiment is a complete success!

I have applied one of the default metal effects to the floor of the little hut in the render so you can see that, yes, the lovely blue night sky of the skybox is indeed working as a Raycast lighting environment! Unfortunately, while 怪獣対若大将P allows EDITING of their skydomes, the read me does not allow secondary distribution. Which is a shame, because I definitely plan to convert a few more of their domes!
The commentary in the bottom panel is just me being silly. When posing them, I had the idea of the brothers being woken up in the middle of the night by an erupting volcano.

Other Credits:
Stage by Kalvici
Domon pajama model credits in the description here
Takashi pajama model credits in the description here
Kyoji pajama model credits in the description here
No MME was used apart from Raycast.

Description
I've been interested in the possibility of converting normal MMD skydomes (or at least their textures) into functional Raycast skyboxes that produce a working lighting environment. But to make a skybox for Raycast , you need to start with an HDR/HDRI image that has...a LOT more data in it than the standard .png or .jpg that most normal skydomes use!
A little while ago, I came across a tutorial for creating HDR images out of regular, standard images. I thought it sounded like the perfect solution, apart from the fact that it was meant for photographs one could take with a camera, and involved heavy use of GIMP which I am really not familiar with!
I chose a regular skydome that I thought would look interesting as a potential lighting environment. After much trial and error, and going back and forth between GIMP and Paint.net to play with the shadows/brightness/contrast on copies of the original texture and create the necessary overexposed and underexposed "photographs" required by the tutorial, I managed a result that I was satisfied with and saved it as an HDR file. Then I converted into this fully functional Raycast skybox.

I must confess, I had been hoping to get a night sky with an area of red-orange glow included in the diffuse or specular lighting from the lava. Unfortunately, it wasn't as strong as I'd hoped and I had to give it a little help with a Disk Light. The moon ended up being the dominant light source from the skybox. BUT the skybox is at least working and reflecting as a skybox should, so that part of this experiment is a complete success!

I have applied one of the default metal effects to the floor of the little hut in the render so you can see that, yes, the lovely blue night sky of the skybox is indeed working as a Raycast lighting environment! Unfortunately, while 怪獣対若大将P allows EDITING of their skydomes, the read me does not allow secondary distribution. Which is a shame, because I definitely plan to convert a few more of their domes!
The commentary in the bottom panel is just me being silly. When posing them, I had the idea of the brothers being woken up in the middle of the night by an erupting volcano.

Other Credits:
Stage by Kalvici
Domon pajama model credits in the description here
Takashi pajama model credits in the description here
Kyoji pajama model credits in the description here
No MME was used apart from Raycast.