Skybox

I set about making an original Skybox using an online tutorial. I've only ever used the preset Skyboxes that Unity provides so this was really exciting to learn to do. First things first I made the rectangle piece that would serve to be the middle of the skybox and the main pattern.

This was my fist attempt where I thought to use photo clouds taken and stuck together to make a sort of cloud ocean, like fog going up very high. I used this technique of selecting clouds from photos and using the feathering technique and cropping to get the clouds out and still have the fluffy cloud texture. This was a new way of using Photoshop that I haven't done before or knew how to do so it was definitely good to learn even though I didn't end up using this version. 

 I decided that this would be better. I think that the clouds lying separately in the sky and hanging there would look better in the end product rather than having them stretch from side to side and risking difficulties with overlapping and such. This is the first time that I have painted clouds by hand and I think they turned out really well and I'm really happy with how they look. There is a thin line of clouds at the bottom to simulate what I had in the first draft and I used the offset tool to make sure there wouldn't be a seam. I think this looks much better and neater compared to the first one.

This is a version I did with some stars in just to see what it would look like. If we were to go with stars I would add a few more around the rest of the picture and put some on the top cap of the skydome. I actually quite like the look of the stars, I tried to make it look like a far away galaxy. I had a lot of fun making this and would like to try it again with different skies, I may practice a few so I have some stored for future projects. 

Here was my first attempt at creating a skydome. I had a lot of problems and difficulties with this part of the tutorial. I kept getting many issues with stretching, tiling and the UV's in general. I recreated the dome a number of times and retextured it a number of times as well but there was always something that went wrong. In the end I got one that was premade and dropped my own textures onto it. I would like to look over the one I have to see where I went wrong and see how I can improve in the future, however due to time constraints I really needed to use this one. 

This is the final fixed skybox in 3DS Max. As you can see the textures are all in proportion and nothing is stretching, it all turned out much better. It does look like there will be some seams at the top and bottom, I just imported the grabbed imaged into Photoshop and painted over the seams by hand and it looks much neater. I learnt a lot doing this Skybox and I'm glad I did it as I now have the knowledge on how to make them in the future which will come in very useful. 

Here are some pictures of what the Skybox looks like in unity after being assigned to the material. The first is just with the simple grey box model and the second is with the fog that will be covering the floor of the level with a few of the extra buildings but not all. I'm glad the skybox kept it's colour and resolution and it seems to be without any stretching or issues. For my first skybox I'm very happy with how it came out and think I have come out of this well prepared to make another and improve on what I've done here. I also learnt a lot about painting clouds and hope to take that into my regular drawing, not just for skyboxes.