Painting The Sky: Creating Artist Driven HDR 360 Panoramic Sky Domes in UE5

In this first video in a series on sun and sky lighting, we look at how to create skydomes (also known as a skybox) in Unreal Engine, both from HDR photography as well as hand-painted matte paintings, as well as how to create a sun object, using both as emissive surfaces to illuminate the scene with Lumen GI. In addition to artistic control, this approach has the added benefit of allowing you to separate the direct and indirect light into separate render passes for compositing in a fully animated virtual production.
In addition to Unreal, the video also discusses strategies for creating the skydome and sun in Maya, painting the dome in Substance Painter, and converting aspect ratio and color spaces in Nuke.
Chapters
0:00 Overview: Sky atmosphere and clouds vs skydomes
2:43 Skydome material settings
5:29 Skydome material instance
7:38 Skydome material nodes
9:27 Sun mesh rotation axis & light parenting
11:08 Painting a skydome
12:34 Aspect ratio
13:36 Dome UVs in Maya
14:32 Color spaces
Unreal Engine playlist: • VAD Maya to Unreal Loo...

[@kyletallant3360]

Phenomenal video, very informative!

[@isaacolander8291]

Very nice

[@IncrediblePig]

I don't know where/how to get the "Skydome material instance" . Since that is not clear the rest of the video from that moment on is also confusing. :(

[@derekfloodVFX]

A material instance is generated from a material. So you would need to first make the material, which is what is shown in the video.

[@mihailspil-haufter]

@@derekfloodVFX Thank you for clarification, I'll check this out once again.