Background sky

# 1 28-04-2005 , 02:46 PM

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I was just wondering, what is the most common way of putting a nice blue sky in the background of an outdoor scene? I can imagine applying a map to a large plane that sits way in the background of the scene but something tells me that there might be other ways.

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# 2 28-04-2005 , 03:20 PM

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Maya has this thing called an environment sky (sorry, not a very good term for it!!), which can be found in the hypershade under the Environment textures section. I've used it before and it gave very nice results, with realistic looking clouds. I think it attaches the sky to your camera. If you do a search on the web it should throw up a few sites that will tell you more about it, as well as in the Maya documentation. I'm afraid I'm no way expert enough on it to be able to tell you the ins and outs.

Another more simpler way to add a sky would be to add it in post, just render your scene without a sky, then add one in photoshop or equivalent afterwards. There are a lot of websites that will give you good free sky textures.

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# 3 28-04-2005 , 03:39 PM

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Thank you, Lisa. I'll check that out...

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# 4 29-04-2005 , 11:33 AM

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another way- usually I create a NURBS sphere then scale it up to an exagerated size. Then i'll simply give it a color map or just simply Slap a lambert Blue on it.
OR instead you can use the environment sky as the texture for the sphere.
I heard something about using a plane for the background.
this idea is alright but the only thing that the sphere has that the plane doesn't is that the sphere can cover the whole background.
What i mean is that with a sphere you can do i full 360* turn and still be able to see a decent background, on the other hand,
a plane only covers one direction of the camera.
If you are planning for a still shot animation or still picture then a "PLANE" background is more appropriate.

hope i helped out .:p

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# 5 29-04-2005 , 11:48 AM

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Everything helps!

The sphere idea would be great for animations where the camera moves around.

I remember that 3D MAX had a material setting for "self illumination". If you turned it on, the material would light itself. In Maya, wouldn't the same be true if you turned up the incandescents on the material?

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# 6 29-04-2005 , 11:49 AM

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i guess so but ..............well never mind i am just confused why you want to illuminae it? but yeah that should work.

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# 7 02-05-2005 , 03:10 PM

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Mayakid14,
What I'm thinking is that if the sky were self illuminated, I wouldn't have to try to light it. The way I look at it, the prime reason for lighting a model is to control the shadows and highlights. Without those concerns, why not have the model illuminate itself? The sky has no shadows and no highlights.

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