How to Add a Custom Skybox

In this article, I’ll walk you through the process of customizing your Skybox. This guide is applicable only to the Standard Render or Universal Render Pipeline (URP).

Let’s first start by creating a new material for our Skybox. Right-click on the Project section and select Create > Material, then rename it to “Skybox”.

Next, open the Lighting editor by navigating to Window > Rendering > Lighting. A window will pop up, and you can drag it next to the Inspector tab.

To apply the new Skybox that we’ve just created, simply drag it into the Skybox Material field under the Environment subtab.

In order to modify the Skybox, navigate to the Inspector tab and select “Skybox” from the Shader dropdown list.

You will notice that there are four types of Skybox: 6 sided, Cubemap, Panoramic and Procedural.

Procedural

Procedural is the default option that we normally see in every Unity project template.

You can manually adjust settings such as Sun Size, Exposure, Atmosphere Thickness, etc.

6 Sided

As the name suggests, you will need six images to represent the six sides of the Skybox.

Here’s an example of what a 6 sided Skybox looks like:

Cubemap

A Cubemap is a 6 sided Skybox that’s combined into a single image.

Currently, the image is flat, so we need to change its shape to a cube. To do that, navigate to the Inspector tab, select “Cube” from the Texture Shape dropdown list, and hit “Apply”.

And here’s the new shape:

Here’s the result:

Panoramic

A panoramic image is a wide-angle view or photograph that captures a broader field of view, often spanning much wider than the typical aspect ratio of a standard photograph. With this option selected, you can use a panoramic image as your Skybox.

Here’s the result:

In short, there are four different ways you can generate your Skybox. Experiment with each of these options and see which one suits your project the most.