Day 110: How to add a custom Skybox (part 2) & Different Lights in Unity (part 1).

For some reason thought that adding a skybox was part of installing the URP so I actually have the first part of installing the custom skybox bit at the end of the last story (Day 109).

3 other Skyboxes:

I went into the skybox material and started using the procedural map in the last story. Here are some other skybox types:

Let’s look at the 6-sided map:

It’s exactly what it sounds like:

You can actually apply assets to each side, starting with something like a sky with clouds.

This would be custom crafted assets with this particular skybox type in mind. All 6 assets would fill a 360-cube map.

Now, we could swap this material out and what we can do instead of using a 6-sided skybox, we can use a cubemap.

This would require one asset in the same dynamic that the 6-point map is shaped, only, imagine all 6 points put together as one asset.

You would have to change the texture type to ‘cube’ on the asset.

Just like when I’d apply 2D sprite texture type in my last major project, you’d hit apply in this case and it’ll turn your asset into a cube map.

Next skybox type is Panoramic.

A panaramic shot is just one image you can find online. When looking at it as a still image, it has a strange sort of continuity to it but all bunch up.

Different Lights in Unity.

There are 4 different light sources we can look at in Unity.

Let’s cover directional light first.

Directional light is a light source that is infinite. It only goes in one parallel way.

It shoots directly through everything.

Let’s now check out the point light.

The point light has a radius.

It’s more akin to a lightbulb sitting in the room awaiting your instructions.

Real time lighting and shadows are not supported with the point light.

But there are ways around it.

There are many other options to play with as you can see.

Next there is the spotlight.

Sounds pretty obvious.

So, you can see where if I wanted to turn up the intensity or mess with other options.

The final one which URP doesn’t support all that much are the area lights.

Area lights are primarily meant to be baked. They’re not meant to be used in a real-time setting.

In order for the ‘baking’ and other such things to occur, your objects need to be set to ‘static’.

However, as you may have guessed, this gets into the subject of ‘baking lights’ which will be covered in a future story.

Light Source Culling:

Culling is basically telling something to ignore something else. For example, telling the camera to ignore my head while I’m in first person mode or telling a light to ignore a wall while trying to light something.

Culling in this sense is a little different than what is done in the HDRP.

The best light for this example is a directional light.

Say we wanted to shine our light from above and wanted to ignore the ceiling.

Now we can edit the cullmask in our directional light.

Whatever layer is check marked is what the light will shine on.

And for reference, let’s add the ceiling back in:

In the same way I ignored the ceiling in the culling mask, that can be used to ignore other objects and/or shadows as well.

The next story will cover actual lighting I’ll be implementing in this project.