Creating a Sky Dome

This tutorial will show you how to create a sky dome in Maya.

1) Create a NURBS sphere and scale it up large enough to fit your entire scene.

2) Right click on the sphere and select "Isoparm" from the marking menu.

3) Select the isoparm that is located at the center of the sphere around it's equator.

4) Use the pulldown "Edit NURBS > Detatch Surface".

5) Select and delete the bottom half of the sphere.

6) Open the Hypershade (Window > Rendering Editors > Hypershade...) and create a new Surface Shader material (Create > Materials > Surface Shader).

7) Open the Attribute Editor (ctrl+a) for that material.

8) Click the black/white checker button to the right of "Out Color".

9) Select "File" from the list window as a "Normal" 2D Texture.

10) Locate the sky texture file you wish to use in the "Image Name" field.

11) Click on the "place2DTexture" tab at the top of the Attribute Editor.

12) Change the "Rotate Frame" to -90 degrees.

13) Assign the new surface shader to the NURBS dome you created in steps 1-5.

14) Select the dome and use the pulldown "Edit NURBS > Reverse Surface Direction".

15) In the Attribute Editor for the Surface Shader open the "Hardware Texture" section and change "Textured Channel" to "combined channel" and "Texture Resolution" to "Highest (256x256)".

16) In the Attribute Editor for the sky dome (NURBS sphere) open the "Render Stats" section and uncheck the boxes for "Casts Shadows" and "Receive Shadows".

You should now have your sky dome all set-up. The reason for using a Surface Shader instead of a Lambert material is so you will not have to light your sky for the renderings.