Making skyboxes for Unity 5 PBR

Unity Engine
1

I was wondering what steps, are recommended for making skyboxes that play well with the PBR in unity 5.

This gave me some ideas.

From what I get

  • Make sure the sun isnt present in the skybox render

  • Add a sun with a directional light and lens flare

  • The directional light needs to match the sun position perfectly

  • The intensity and color must match the skybox settings

Any more hints?

By the way, what software do you guys use to make skyboxes? Im using Vue.

2

If you use the correct shaders in the setup, you should be able to use anything as a skybox, it’s just a texture.
I have heard many people talk about Vue but never found a link to their site, could you provide one?

In Unity 5, the new PBS skybox shaders are located under Skyboxes in the shader dropdown in materials.
As far as having a perfectly aligned sun, design your skybox WITHOUT a sun, then tell Unity to add it in procedurally using a directional light, so no matter where it is, the sun graphic moves with it.

You can use the 6 sided, cubemap and procedural shaders for this, but personally I would recommend using the cubemap one.
I believe you can also use the dynamic sun on all of these, but I cannot remember how, ill take a look and get back to you.

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3

UPDATE: add the skybox without a sun to a cubemap, then add that to a material.
Open up Window/Lighting and add the material in Environment Lighting/Skybox and the directional light to be the sun under Sun.
Change the Ambient Source to Skybox so your skybox material will effect reflectant materials in the PBS shaders.

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