Matt Painting / Background plane outside window?

Hi All,
I modeled a small room and had planned on just having the windows solid white, but on applying a transparent material on them, I thought it looked way better (see images).

Can anyone tell me what I should be searching for to make some easy background landscape / plane / image outside of the window? Ideally some solution that looks realistic.

Thanks!
p.s. I searched 'image on plane, Unity, Matt painting behind window, Unity etc. in Google and din't have much luck'

 

The easiest way would be to use a Skybox instead of the default procedual sky. There are some nice ones in the Asset Store. You could also use the ones from HDRI Haven.

 

Some free to use photos?

 

Hey @Mauri does a Skybox require a heavy performance hit? Right now I'm working with unlit shaders, trying to keep everything light.

@AcidArrow do you mean I just apply an image to a plane? Any tips on distance of the plane etc to compensate for parallax? Does the plane need to curve etc?

 

This may or may not work for you, please experiment, a plane could be fine, but I tend to curve them somewhat. Or if it's not just a sky, you could make arbitrary shapes so there is "correct" parallax.

Distance depends on the content, if it's just a sky then as far as way as you can, otherwise closer could be nice.

Here's one of my set-ups:

It works for me, but the camera doesn't move too much and the sky is almost always out of focus so even less than this could have potentially worked

 

hey thanks @AcidArrow - nice scene!
I appreciate the workflow / set up info. Did you make that curved plain in Unity or in your 3D modeling software?
Looks really nice.

 

You're already using a skybox, even if you didn't realize- it's Unity's default skybox. All you'd be doing is switching-out a boring skybox for a nicer one.

 

Well what do you know @kdgalla
Thanks for telling me that

n00b alert haha