Introduction

With the advent of the ViewportFrame, we have seen a wide range of new and inventive uses for the feature. I decided to create a simple ‘Skybox’ model because I really don’t like seeing games where there’s just a drop to nothing, or a clearly flat image.

(The picture below uses a roughly 4096 x 4096 stud terrain map).

In the past I had attempted using programs like Cinema4D to generate six images for use in the actual skybox objects, but whilst they worked in improving the immersion of a game, it still felt flat and static (Not to mention you were still limited by a resolution limit so the images often looked rather poor in quality). This model attempts to fix that by allowing you to put in whatever you want into the skybox and allowing you to dynamically change it, or just make a more immersive skybox which seems to go on and on forever.

(The picture below uses the same terrain map as above, but includes a desert in the ‘Skybox’)

(Large moving objects)

How this works is by putting a billboard gui in front of the main camera (Constantly positioning it so it’s in front of the camera) at a really far away distance so it shouldn’t really block anything in the workspace, then filling the screen with said billboard gui. We then create a ‘fake’ camera at the ‘SKYBOX_ORIGIN’ position (This defaults to 0,0,0) and keep changing the fake camera’s orientation to match the real camera, and then dependant on where the real camera moves, the skybox will move a fraction of the speed.

The reason why we move the camera a fraction of the speed is because these skybox objects are actually really small!

(The MrGreyR15 is just a regular sized character).

This then turns into this;

Limitations

There are some limitations to this, most of which are due to the ViewportFrame (At the time of writing this), such as lighting / physics and how the ViewportFrame will begin to stretch when it reaches a certain resolution - distorting whatever objects you use, but for the most part it seems to be ok, and I’m sure many issues will be fixed later on. I think the biggest concern is that this isn’t really a good use of the ViewportFrame, but i’ll leave that to another time. Fog also seems to be pretty funky with this, I would probably recommend disabling lighting fog, and just use your own method (If possible).

Advice for use

My advice for using this would be to keep a physical barrier be it a hill, invisible wall, large stretch of water, so the player can’t just walk right to the edge of the world, because whilst this can improve immersion, you will still be able to tell when the world ends. Good uses include the ability to create extremely large objects that would have otherwise been cut off by the render distance, and the ability to dynamically change the skybox without having to rely on a large number of images to put into an actual skybox object.

Just to say this is completely open source, so do whatever you want with it, I hope we can make some more immersive experiences.

How to use

By default the 3DSkybox includes a simple example ‘city’ union i made that can showcase the size of the objects, just drag it out and put it in the workspace.

If you go into the SkyboxScript you can change some options like;

Skybox Distance - This defines how far away the billboard gui sits, it’s best to have this quite big so it doesn’t clip with anything in the workspace, but I wouldn’t put it too big since it seems to get a bit funky.

Skybox Origin - This is where the fake camera sits.

Allow Movement - This is just a toggle to allow the skybox to ‘move’ relative to the player’s camera.

Movement Scale - This value defines how much the skybox will move when the camera does, the smaller the value, the faster the skybox will move (It’s good to set a larger value if you want to make the skybox seem further away than it really is).

You can then place the objects you want to include in the skybox under the ViewportFrame object.

Once done just put the 3DSkybox billboard gui in the StarterGui.

Download

Download and Link to Model 3DSkybox.rbxm (72.3 KB)

https://www.roblox.com/library/2613880977/3D-Skybox

I thought I might throw in some interesting clips that can showcase some of the funky side of things.