How to Create Beautiful Skies in Blender

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3D Environments Course + 3 Asset Packs:

[TarekAlShawwa]

Summary:
Step 1. Get a free sky image from Unsplash
Step 2. Plug the image into both the Base color and the Emission of the Principled BSDF
Step 3. copy the rotation of the image plane to the camera (it's better to use the copy rotation constraint IMO)
Step 4. Match the horizon line in the image to the horizon in your 3D scene
Step 5. Use a sky texture (Nishita) for your environment
Step 5. Turn off shadow visibility for the plane so it doesn't cast a massive shadow over your scene
Step 6. Make sure the lighting in you scene roughly matches the lighting direction of the cloud image (or flip the cloud image horizontally to match your scene lights better)

[jeremvfx]

Thank you so much . As a beginner i've seen a lot of tutorial on how to model, render etc but nobody talks about the sky, so thats really helped me!

[aniketgore]

This channel has became one of my favorite so quickly. Thanks for the great content.

[peterrandall]

You should definitely do a breakdown of the mountain sunset scene example you showed, the lighting is amazing. It'd be cool to see how you did it!

[Crimsin]

Scaling to flip the image seems so simple, but I never even considered that! Genius, my dude! Thanks a ton!

[megan]

Thank you for not gatekeeping and sharing all of this AMAZING material with us.

[TheWinterSoviet]

I really like your 10 minute tutorials, they're incredibly useful. Keep going!

[abrarahmedcgi]

Great to see Max sharing his techniques. Top class digital artist.

[mr_pike]

I literally just spend the last 2 days trying and researching this. Thanks youtube but a bit late. Something I learned is that getting the mist pass to combine mountains with mountains from a photo can look really good!

Edit: if you use this in an animation. Animating the top edge of the image a bit to the left or right using a shape key creates a cool parralalex effect. Gives the idea the clouds are moving.

[thearcanamodernau]

Back when I was new to Blender I couldn't figure how to make HDRi's look good so I tried this and thought "huh, this seems like a pretty dumb fix but it works, I bet a professional would look at this and think it's a crappy trick". Thank you for confirming that sometimes the simplest solution is the best.

[andrewjk]

These are great man! I'm a c4d user but all these techniques and practices still apply!

[Rockberries]

I'm excited for the future of this channel mate, I'm glad I was early.
Thanks for your valuable content, no bullshit, only solid and practical advice.

[sykobob]

I'm finding these tutorials incredibly useful. Thank you

[BeautempsTW]

Awesome ! This channel is an open window to a world of possibilities. Thank you again for sharing this

[drottningu]

Instantly subscribed yesterday. This is now the best channel for blender content. Thanks for sharing with us.

[beyondus]

dude, you are a GOAT for uploading all these vids recently. thanks for sharing!

[vladyslavriabchenko]

Exactly what I have been searching for!! Thank you for the amazing tutorial, Max!

[HunterL]

I’m so glad your channel was in my recommended! Your walkthroughs are great!

[omkarprabhu]

I knew about using images as backgrounds, but parenting it to camera trick is just great, I will definitely use that from now on.

[bernard]

You got my sub. Thanks for the info. Straight to the point and ain't confusing. Looking forward