Super Simple Skybox

Overview

Super Simple Skybox is the ultimate solution for creating beautiful and dynamic skies in your Unity scenes. With this asset, you can set up a stunning procedural skybox in less than 60 seconds, with no coding required. Compatible with URP + BIRP and both perspective and orthographic views, this asset provides tons of features for artists to customize and extend to their needs.

Remarkable features include physically-based limb darkening for the sun and moon, and a procedural star rendering mode that emulates the real distribution of star temperatures, creating a realistic night sky. The sunset can also be fully customized by combining several gradients to create the perfect sunset for your game. Moreover, you can set the exact angular diameter of celestial bodies, like the sun and moon, to achieve 100% realistic results or to achieve your artistic vision.

This asset is easy to use, plug-and-play, with a user-friendly UI to configure the skybox, including cloud textures, sun and sunset colors, sky colors, moon properties, procedural or texture-based stars, and more! It also includes additional materials, shaders, textures, and scripts to enhance your skybox experience.

In summary Super Simple Skybox is an all-in-one package that makes creating stunning dynamic skies in Unity faster, easier, and more efficient than ever before.

Highlights

1. Plug-and-play: Drag and drop this skybox material into your Unity scene’s skybox material slot. You’re done.
2. Extendable Code Free: Artists welcome! All shaders included in this pack are provided with Unity's Shadergraph, making it easy to extend and enhance this skybox shader to your needs without coding. Want to change the way the night skybox works? No problem with Shadergraph.
3. Customizable: Configure this skybox for Unity with dozens of parameters ranging from cloud textures, sun and sunset colors, sky colors, moon properties, procedural or texture-based stars, and more! All from a user-friendly UI.
   

Remarkable Features

• The sun and moon render with physically based limb darkening - an optical effect seen in stars where the central part of the disk appears brighter than the edge. This system even accounts for the relative attenuation of different wavelengths of light!
• Every star is a different temperature. The procedural star rendering mode uses novel algorithms that emulate the real distribution of star temperatures. These star temperatures are then evaluated using a proprietary black-body radiation algorithm to create a realistic picture of the distribution and variety of colors in the night sky.
• We know beautiful sunsets are crucial to getting the perfect look for your project. Our sunsets combine several customizable gradients together to create the perfect sunset for your game.
• Celestial bodies, like the sun and moon, are typically measured using an Angular Diameter. This measurement describes how large the object appears in the sky. For example, the sun has an angular diameter of 0.53 degrees while the moon has an angular diameter of 0.52 degrees. With this skybox, you can set the exact angular diameter of the sun or moon to achieve 100% realistic results or to achieve your artistic vision.

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Is this skybox compatible with both perspective and orthographic cameras?

Yes, Super Simple Skybox has been tested and works well on both perspective camera and orthographic camera projections.

Can I customize the sky color?

Yes. You can customize the color of the sky at the horizon and directly overhead (zenith). These colors automatically blend into each other between the horizon and the zenith. You can set these colors for both day and night - you have a day horizon color and night horizon color and a day zenith color and night zenith color. The skybox automatically blends from the day to the night colors as the sun goes down.

Can I show or hide the ground?

Yes! You can disable the ground color in order to give the impression of the character being in the sky. Just tick or untick the [.c]Use Ground[.c] option.

What is included in Super Simple Skybox?

The asset includes materials, shaders for Unity, art (textures), C# scripts, scenes, and a demo scene. The skybox material, skybox shader graph, cloud, stars, sun, light position, and skybox UV shaders, procedural stars shader, cloud textures, night sky textures, an easy-to-use script to rotate the sun, assembly definition for the skybox scripts, and a sample post processing profile are all included.

Is this skybox easy to set up?

Yes, it is a plug-and-play asset. You can drag and drop the skybox material into your Unity scene's skybox material slot and you're done.

Is this skybox easy to customize?

Yes, it is highly customizable with dozens of parameters ranging from cloud textures, sun and sunset colors, sky colors, moon properties, procedural or texture-based stars, and more. All of these can be configured from a user-friendly UI.

Are there any unique features in this skybox?

Yes, the skybox includes several unique features such as physically based limb darkening for the sun and moon, which is an optical effect seen in stars where the central part of the disk appears brighter than the edge. The system even accounts for the relative attenuation of different wavelengths of light! Additionally, it has a procedural star rendering mode which uses novel algorithms that emulate the real distribution of star temperatures. Sunsets are also customizable with several gradients used to create the perfect sunset for your game, angular diameter of celestial bodies is also modifiable to achieve 100% realistic results or artistic visions.

Does Super Simple Skybox work on mobile devices?

Yes. We recommend using a star texture rendering mode because the procedural stars can be performance intensive.

The objects in my scene are suddenly tinted blue. How do I fix it?

The "Cast Shadows" setting in the Shader Graph can cause the Environmental Lighting to bake incorrectly.

• Open the Skybox Shader
• Toggle the "Cast Shadows" setting for your target (Universal or Built-In)
• Save the Graph
• Re-bake the lighting
• Validate if the issue is fixed

In Unity 2021.3 LTS, the lighitng works correctly when Cast Shadows is enabled.

In Unity 2022.2+, the lighting works correctly when Cast Shadows is disabled.

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3.1.1

March 9, 2023

• Corrected some language in the Readme
• Removed an unnecessary Using directive.
• Added Documentation and Registration links to the editor.
• Added more cloud textures, bringing the total to 30 cloud textures.

3.1.0

March 2, 2023

• Clouds now have improved shading. You can control the shading intensity with the Shading Intensity slider.
• Clouds now more accurately respond to changes in the directional light.
• Clouds are now affected by an ambient lighting term.
• Clouds are now more opaque by default. You can now control the cloud opacity more accurately using the Opacity slider in the Clouds/Look Settings section.
• Added a prefab for the Moon object.
• Added a "Constant Color Mode". The Constant Color Mode enables you to set fixed Skybox colors that will not change regardless of the sun and moon position. The Constant Color Mode is accompanied with a simplified editor that hides the Night color options. The Day and Night Colors mode continues to work as normal.
  

3.0.2

February 23, 2023

• The new VR Skybox component was not included in the upload files with release 3.0.1. This release correctly includes that component in the release.

3.0.1

February 21, 2023

• Added a VR Skybox option
• To use it, simply drag-and-drop the VR Skybox prefab into your scene
• Add your main camera as the camera target
• Make sure to use the correct material for the VR Skybox material slot
• Fixed potential null reference errors that could occur from the callback demo.

3.0.0

February 3, 2023

• SetSunPosition.cs is now replaced with DirectionalLight.cs.
• Added two new components, Sun.cs and Moon.cs, which inherit from DirectionalLight.cs.
• These new components enable you to position the sun and moon independently of each other.
• Added events for sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset. Subscribe to OnRise or OnSet in Sun.cs and/or Moon.cs.
• Star rotation can now be handled independently with the SetStarRotation.cs component. Typically, you want to add this to the same game object as Sun.cs.
• The sun and moon now automatically handle their own shadows and intensity based on the position relative to the zenith. This is an optional feature.
• Rotation Speed has been changed to Rotations Per Hour to simplify time of day management.

2.1.0

February 2, 2023

• Added 8 additional cloud textures.

2.0.3

January 10, 2023

• Fixed an issue with environmental lighting. Now correctly uses the Skybox color when the Environmental Lighting Source is set to Skybox.

‍2.0.2

January 1, 2023

• Fixed an issue with orthographic rendering. Now correctly supports orthographic perspective.

2.0.1

October 3, 2022

• Fixed an issue where the sun position vector was incorrectly overwriting the sky zenith color in built projects.

2.0.0

September 12, 2022

Major Update

• The sun is now a sun disc with physically-based limb darkening.
• The sun angular diameter property replaces the sun size property.
• You can now disable sun sky lighting (i.e., sun falloff and sunset modifiers).
• Added procedural star rendering option.
• Added star saturation option.
• Added a custom UI, with separate sections for Ground Settings, Sky Settings, Sun Settings, Moon Settings, Star Settings, and Cloud Settings.

1.4.2

June 17, 2022

• The shader was incorrectly set to Depth Test Always, causing other objects to fail to appear on screen. This has been fixed.
• Updated demo scene.

1.4.1

• The shader was incorrectly failing to identify when being used on Built-In Render Pipeline, which caused the Skybox to render pink in some cases. This has been fixed.

1.4.0

• Now works on Built-In Render Pipeline (requires Shader Graph).
• Updated baseline Unity version to 2021.3.

1.3.0

• There is now a Moon disc rendered in the sky rendered with physically-based limb darkening. The moon disc will always appear directly opposite the sun. You can control the Moon Disc size, color, and lighting falloff from the SuperSimpleSkybox Material.

1.2.0

• You can now control the Sun Falloff using the Sun Falloff float in the Material editor. This may be useful in cases where you want a tighter emissive region in the skybox. This setting can cause the sun to completely disappear at lower sun sizes, so...
• You can now increase the Sun Size from [0, 1] (previously clamped to [0, 0.1]).

1.1.0

• You can now hide the ground layer by unchecking the "Use Ground" checkbox in the Material editor. This may be useful in cases where the ground layer is visible and you wish it to be hidden.

1.0.0

• Initial Release.