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)
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.
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.
Don't forget to set the roughness to 1 so the image doesn't look washed out. Also you can put a hue/saturarion node to make tweak the colors a little bit.
The addon "Import Images as Planes" would make it even easier since it automatically sizes the plane to the image aspect ratio, no UV stretching... Also you could still mix this with HDRi s to get realistic environment lighting. Although "free" HDRi are more difficult to find.
Cube unwrap squad unite! Nice work. I know how to do this stuff but never put it all together like this. You could also add the image as a background on the camera but you can't control the brightness of it. Thanks!
I always ask around when I see people post of a render with beautiful sky yet for some reason they never care to answer. Thank you, I think the sky is very important.
I often do this now with more realistic renders like the one I posted two weeks ago on my twitter and Instagram accounts, if I had watched this sooner I could have applied it when I made the final renders instead of shuffling the plane around. Next time I try it out when I make a more realist render, Thanks for the tips in this video.
nice tutorial. would you please also give some recommendations where we can get urban building facade images to use then as windows background in interior renders? thanks
That's amazing, but now I have an issue where it's one of my objects that is casting a shadow onto the sky plane! Is there a way in the object settings/material settings to have it not receive shadows?
If you Image is not high resolution enough, you have plenty of Ai upscaling nowday that can bring your image up to 8k. great tutorial. thanks for the trick very usefull!
Hey In my Principled BSDF I don´t have the circle in emission to connect it, only have emission with a dropdown with color and strength, How do I change it?
can you tell me how I can set up that live-preview window on the bottom right of your screen? I have seen this many times but I wonder how I can set up a window like this, clean and without obstructions and without seeing the grid...
One downaide with using it as a plane in the backgrt and as an emitfer is that the image looks much flatter in terms of contrast. I boticed the image looks much better when it was open in the uv editor. Why not add it comp later to keep the contrast? You can always render thr image transparent and use the backdrop plane only as visual reference
Probably like this: Create a new window by dragging up below the scene collection, set it to 3d viewport, turn off the gizmos and overlays, right click the header and unclick "show header", and set it to camera view.
Hm... Yes, admitted, this can give you some very beautiful and realistic results. Which is not that much of a surprise, when you _take_ something beautiful and realistic and just paste it into your scene. But from a video that had "create" and "in Blender" in the title, I had expected a bit more.
Hi, is it possible to put the image in a sphere or semi-sphere to create some kind of a dome so when i move the camera the sky is always visible on final render ?
Love your tuts…simple and to the point explaining the how/why. One question, do these work in animated scenes just as well or just reserved for stills?
and .... what if you move the camera? So in feature film VFX we often do this in Nuke, but instead of sticking it on a plane, we project onto Spheres, ideally you have a spherical stitches texture as well. That way the camera can pan freely.
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)
Thanks mate will be saving that to the desktop
Neat!
Could you please do that for all the tutorials I watch and forget? Lol…maybe chat gbt can do it?
Idk why but my Sky texture is way to bright
This channel has became one of my favorite so quickly. Thanks for the great content.
it's my favorite too 🔥
Thank you for not gatekeeping and sharing all of this AMAZING material with us.
Scaling to flip the image seems so simple, but I never even considered that! Genius, my dude! Thanks a ton!
wow channel has been only posting 1 month and already very high quality tutorials and absolutely necessary ones
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!
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.
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!
Great to see Max sharing his techniques. Top class digital artist.
dude, you are a GOAT for uploading all these vids recently. thanks for sharing!
I really like your 10 minute tutorials, they're incredibly useful. Keep going!
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.
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.
Instantly subscribed yesterday. This is now the best channel for blender content. Thanks for sharing with us.
I'm finding these tutorials incredibly useful. Thank you
Great video 👍
These are great man! I'm a c4d user but all these techniques and practices still apply!
Don't forget to set the roughness to 1 so the image doesn't look washed out. Also you can put a hue/saturarion node to make tweak the colors a little bit.
The addon "Import Images as Planes" would make it even easier since it automatically sizes the plane to the image aspect ratio, no UV stretching... Also you could still mix this with HDRi s to get realistic environment lighting. Although "free" HDRi are more difficult to find.
AmbientCG has an awesome collection of free HDRi and textures check them out :)
polyhaven
free 8k images
so simple yet so genius, thanks!
Very useful for me whos blender knowledge is only 2 months. Subscribed for sure 🙏
Neat little tutorial, Max. I wanna teach like you when I grow up :-)
Awesome ! This channel is an open window to a world of possibilities. Thank you again for sharing this
thanks for teaching this to me, what a great technique.
You got my sub. Thanks for the info. Straight to the point and ain't confusing. Looking forward
Damn, Max's getting consistent. Excited for your future content bro!👀
holy ur channel is growing fast. good job man, really fun to watch these
I’m so glad your channel was in my recommended! Your walkthroughs are great!
i am actually doing this from so long, this saves a lot of time
I knew about using images as backgrounds, but parenting it to camera trick is just great, I will definitely use that from now on.
This guy is going places! Mark my words!
Exactly what I have been searching for!! Thank you for the amazing tutorial, Max!
If you want to copy another object rotation, you can add an object constraint and click on copy rotation. Great video!
i discovered your channel 5 mins. ago, instantly subscribed
Been using blender for 3+ years and after watching countless blender videos, I consider this channel to be second only to Ian Hubert imo
i searching whole yt for this tutorial , i learned a lot
thanks for the tutorial sir
This video saved the day 👏
Such a detailed tutorial 🥹 thank you so much for this tutorial
Cube unwrap squad unite! Nice work. I know how to do this stuff but never put it all together like this. You could also add the image as a background on the camera but you can't control the brightness of it. Thanks!
Love your content bro, keep up the good work!
Aah...yes finally I can finish my render 🔥
Thanks for this video man. Solved my most of the problems.
I always ask around when I see people post of a render with beautiful sky yet for some reason they never care to answer. Thank you, I think the sky is very important.
This is what i need, thanks man. Keep it up 👍👍
mate your tutorial are awesome!!!
MAN!!!!1 KEEP THESE COMING
i love this channel
I often do this now with more realistic renders like the one I posted two weeks ago on my twitter and Instagram accounts, if I had watched this sooner I could have applied it when I made the final renders instead of shuffling the plane around. Next time I try it out when I make a more realist render, Thanks for the tips in this video.
Great tutorial. I'm liking the content you're providing....glad I subscribed.
Would you make tutorial about realistic water?
Same. Please share the realistic water secret!
Chuckcg made a tutorial About that
incredible
nice tutorial. would you please also give some recommendations where we can get urban building facade images to use then as windows background in interior renders? thanks
Thank you so much Max! Keep up the great work. 😎
Thank you so much! I love it :) I watched this video and just clicked subscribe
That's amazing, but now I have an issue where it's one of my objects that is casting a shadow onto the sky plane! Is there a way in the object settings/material settings to have it not receive shadows?
do you have tutorial for such a great water?
How did you make the ground , the reflection is majestic ,
Thank you! Exactly what I was looking for!
pls never stop making videos.
Ah really lovely tutorial ✨
If you Image is not high resolution enough, you have plenty of Ai upscaling nowday that can bring your image up to 8k. great tutorial. thanks for the trick very usefull!
Make sure the upscaling "model" was trained to handle photos and/or textures specifically. Use a generic upscaler at your own risk.
What about when you animate your camera to rotate on z axis in an animation?
Great video Max! Thanks for the tips 🔥
New subscriber here: Why is there no mention of the water in the scene and does the picture of the sky reflect on the water or not?
Thank you mann..❤
How do you see the render in a separate window? Is it an addon?
Just drag open a new viewport window, keep it in rendered view and play with enough of the toggles to disable all the UI
@@maxhayart Thank you! This is much better than using 2 seperate vertical windows.
@@maxhayart How did you specifically disable/hide the ">" and "
hey, i have a question... how have you got that second viewport showing the rendered view with the camera perspective?
Check out Max’s ‘how to make amazing renders…’ video about 2:00 in
Hey In my Principled BSDF I don´t have the circle in emission to connect it, only have emission with a dropdown with color and strength, How do I change it?
You are awesome bro in everything 😘❤️🔥🙂
For photorealistic resoults just use photos, easy
These tips are amazing. I have no excuse to not be making stuff now haha
Try Add ons -> Images as Planes
That saves a lot of hassle with UVs etc
Thanks for sharing this man
really usefull
amazing job, thx dude
Awesome content! I already see I'll be spending a lot of time on your channel :)
Thank you for sharing!
can you tell me how I can set up that live-preview window on the bottom right of your screen?
I have seen this many times but I wonder how I can set up a window like this, clean and without obstructions and without seeing the grid...
Check out Max’s ‘how to make amazing renders…’ video about 2:00 in
One downaide with using it as a plane in the backgrt and as an emitfer is that the image looks much flatter in terms of contrast. I boticed the image looks much better when it was open in the uv editor. Why not add it comp later to keep the contrast? You can always render thr image transparent and use the backdrop plane only as visual reference
Very good ! Thanks !
My image end up a bit darker after this? Any idea what could be wrong?
How do i make a night scene with sky texture?
How do you get your display to look like that? With the project in the right, and the other image to the left with your workspace in the middle.
Probably like this: Create a new window by dragging up below the scene collection, set it to 3d viewport, turn off the gizmos and overlays, right click the header and unclick "show header", and set it to camera view.
Hm...
Yes, admitted, this can give you some very beautiful and realistic results. Which is not that much of a surprise, when you _take_ something beautiful and realistic and just paste it into your scene.
But from a video that had "create" and "in Blender" in the title, I had expected a bit more.
where do you get those images?
make a video on how u have managed everything , textures scenes etc
Awesome.
what if the sky has no horizon ?
Hi, is it possible to put the image in a sphere or semi-sphere to create some kind of a dome so when i move the camera the sky is always visible on final render ?
Could you do a tutorial on the second example you put up please? This is incredible!
Hi, I'm a beginner. How do you get the render view that's on the bottom right of your screen that updates every time you make a change in the scene?
Good tip.
U can jus use copy loc constraint if ur camera shakes
genius idea
How I can available sun dis in sky texture
Doesn't the plane still be able to block the light of the sun, or does unchecking the shadow box fix that?
what if the light in the sky picture is coming from like behind the clouds and not from the left or right
Love your tuts…simple and to the point explaining the how/why. One question, do these work in animated scenes just as well or just reserved for stills?
I love your tutorial so much!Can you make a video about how to make fog or clouds to your senses？
can you make a quick tutorial for output render settings and best optimization. My renders are always pixelated when i zoom in
Wondering how you get that clean rendered view panel with no menus or anything
Check out Max’s ‘how to make amazing renders…’ video about 2:00 in
yesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss keep making videos
Yasssss
and .... what if you move the camera? So in feature film VFX we often do this in Nuke, but instead of sticking it on a plane, we project onto Spheres, ideally you have a spherical stitches texture as well. That way the camera can pan freely.