Skyboxes and Shaders

To create a gradient sky, stars, sun, moon and fog. I followed a combination of tutorials from Boysen (2020), The Game Guy (2021) and Minions Art (2020).

  • Reaching for the stars
  • How to make a Gradient Skybox with Stars in Unity | Shader Graph Unity
  • Shader Graph : Stylized Skybox

To program a day-night cycle I set up an empty field and programmed the sun rotation with PlayMaker using a tween, I tried a few different options and times to get it to work.

Iteration 1 of Skybox Shader

Iteration 1 of Skybox Shader and day/night cycle

Art Assets

A 3D Greenhouse in Blender

Drawing the textures for the greenhouse.

Where it went wrong:

I started with ProBuiler which couldn’t model the greenhouse the way I wanted. Blender was a better choice but the hand-drawn textures I created were too detailed and complicated for a Mobile game and I was overworking it. The greenhouse also just looked awful!

How I fixed it!

I stated again with a much simpler concept, and modelled a basic shape in blender, then imported the model and used transparency on the import.

Sprint Retrospective

Indie Game Development for a small company or studio is a balancing act. I found myself making slow progress this sprint, submitting a business plan at the same time as a business plan involved putting on many different hats and spreading myself thin. In the future, I will plan sprints more realistically around my other commitments.

Sprint 4 was also my first foray into shaders and the first 3D model I’ve put into a game using Blender (although I have practised with Maya/Blender and previously used ProBuilder for a project). The shaders were easier than I had imagined and my favourite part of the sprint, the sky still needs tweaking but I felt I made good progress with the sky.

I have grown a little frustrated at my progress with blender, the environment and the background of my game. My work with shaders has gone well. The art asset creation will be carried into sprint 5 where I am working on the user interface and level design. I still need to design cards for the flower properties and other UI details, as well as animate what’s there with extra ‘juice’. Towards the end of Sprint 5, I hope to have some of my work polished enough to start recording a trailer, creating wallpapers, icons and begin adding sound and music and begin polishing my work for sprint 6.

I am also creating a storyboard for the trailer (which you can find under the blog post Creating a trailer), drafting wallpaper and extra artwork for the press kit this week.

List of Figures

Figure 1. Sarah MASTERS. 2021. Shader Sky.

Figure 2. Sarah MASTERS. 2021. Shader Materials not working.

Figure 3. Sarah MASTERS. 2021. Fog, Sky gradient.

Figure 4. Sarah MASTERS. 2021. Fog, Sky gradient2.

Figure 5. Sarah MASTERS. 2021. ProBuilder Greenhouse.

Figure 6. Sarah MASTERS. 2021. Blender Greenhouse.

Figure 7. Sarah MASTERS. 2021. Blender Greenhouse2.

Figure 8. Sarah MASTERS. 2021. Blender Greenhouse3.

Figure 9. Sarah MASTERS. 2021. Greenhouse sketch.

Figure 10. Sarah MASTERS. 2021. Greenhouse concept.

Figure 11. Sarah MASTERS. 2021. Greenhouse 3D.

References

BOYSEN, Jannik. 2020. ‘Reaching for the Stars ✨’. Medium [online]. Available at: https://medium.com/@jannik_boysen/procedural-skybox-shader-137f6b0cb77c. [accessed 6 Nov. 2021].

MINION ART. 2020. ‘Shader Graph : Stylized Skybox’ Patreon [online]. Available at https://www.patreon.com/posts/shader-graph-39024186 [accessed 6 Nov. 2021].

THE GAME GUY. 2021. ‘How to Make a Gradient Skybox with Stars in Unity | Shader Graph Unity’ [online lecture]. YouTube www.youtube.com, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw2J9NWRdow. [accessed 6 Nov. 2021].