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How to create a skybox? (and when I say "create", I mean CREATE)
Heyo.
I don't know if this was asked before, the only questions I've seen that look like this are the ones that ask how to put them into Unity (assembling the top, right, left, etc textures to make a skybox)
But that is not what I am looking for. Are there any programs to ACTUALLY CREATE skyboxes? (preferably free)
The only one i've heard so far was Spacescape. Which is pretty good.
Also, I am working solo, I am lazy, I want to save time and I want to spend my time making my game more than making skyboxes, so I am looking for generators rather than anything else (hence why I am trying to keep as far away from Blender as possible).
So... any ideas?
You mean Gimp (not blender)? Skyboxes are just textures.
The poor man's method is using single-shade blue, without too many features. That way the edges will match up and the "no cloud zone" down the edges won't stand out. Or make one blue gradient, reused for all the walls.
$$anonymous$$aking a simplistic skybox in gimp would work, but what about the more complex ones?
To make something that is even more complex than that, gimp wouldn't work.
Not sure what a "complex" skybox is. But standard tricks for matching edges would be to make a single 4x width image, and use offset (by 1 panel) when painting near the current edges. The top could be moved and rotated to match edges (but probably not as much needed.)
Of course, that takes time and practice. Once you go past 1 or 2 features/face, it's surprisingly difficult to avoid "hi, I'm an edge" during play.
complex skybox: Clouds, a sun, some mountains. I know that there are skybox genetators that allow me to place these things, just dunno which one and that is what i am asking.
"how to create a skybox" yields tons of results on google. This isn't a unity question. It should be closed.
Answer by PlasmaByte · Dec 24, 2013 at 01:05 AM
You could do what I do and just render your backdrop, although it is much more resource intensive it allows you to fly through it and is much easier to generate.
I make everything that is backdrop part of a separate layer which doesn't interact with any other layers. I then create a second camera, place it at the origin and set it to view only the backdrop layer. I set the main camera to draw on top of the backdrop one (change depth settings and clear flags) and make a little script to constantly rotate it to the same angle as the main camera.
I think it looks pretty cool.
Backdrops? I never heard of that! What exactly is a backdrop? Is it like... Faking a skybox, but using whatever you want in them as a consequence?
Sorry, a better word to use would be background. Yep, this kinda fakes a skybox but obviously means you have to waste resources rendering it which will slow down your program. Perhaps there is a way to turn this into a static image? You could easily place planets, stars or cities in the background like this. I guess you could just have a massive draw distance and place them really far away but I fear that might lead to problems, dunno.