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Well, hello there.
In today's tutorial, I am going to teach you how to apply a sky background image texture,
which will be visible directly in the 3D viewport.
Yes, indeed, you will not need to use the render engines for this.
First things first: you will need an equirectangular image, which, for our purpose, can also be
a 360 degree image.
I have rendered my own 360 degree space image, which was rendered directly from my space
scene tutorial.
There are many ways to get your hands on one of these types of images.
To learn how to render a 360 degree equirectangular image, you can watch my 360 degree rendering
tutorial for Blender.
Alternatively, you can perform a simple google search and use those images to test the technique
that I am about to teach you.
If you're smart, you have probably already taken a print screen of my 360 degree space
image, so that you may use it yourself.
Anyway, I will teach you how to apply the image as a sky background texture in the 3D
viewport.
This technique will also make it so this background texture will affect the illumination of the
scene, which is ideal when we are applying an image as a sky background.
So, let's begin.
Make sure you have activated the world background texture for the 3D viewport's display.
Ok, so, in my test scene I have a simple gray background color.
I will quickly show you how to change that to the 360 degree space image which I have
already shown to you.
So, on the World Tab, you will need to configure everything exactly as I have done.
Make sure the color and lighting informations look exactly as shown.
The environment lighting needs to be set really low.
After that is done, go to the Texture Tab, and create a new World Texture.
You can rename it, so make sure to name it Sky Texture or something.
Now, load your 360 degree background texture.
As I said before, I will use my deep space texture.
Ok, now in order to make it so the texture actually shows up in the horizon of the 3D
viewport, we need to activate the influence of the texture on the color of the horizon.
As you can see, the texture is already visible in the horizon, but it is moving with the
camera.
To fix this, set the mapping coordinates to equirectangular.
Well well, look at that!
The texture has been successfully applied as a 360 degree equirectangular sky background
texture.
Looking good.
If necessary, you can also make some adjustments to the color of the sky and all of that.
You can use this technique to place mountains and other distant objects in the scene, without
having to actually place the 3D objects in the scene.
All you need, is to render the 360 degree image of the mountain scenes and use them
as equirectangular background image textures.
Just make sure to render them at high resolutions.
I hope this technique will help you create some glorious scenes of grandious proportions.
That was it for today's Blender Tutorial.
This tutorial was performed on Blender 2.78.
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