City Lights at Night – 8K True HDR Skyboxes (URP, HDRP)


✦ WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET ... ✦ DEMO CONTROLS Mouse / W A S D - look around Scroll zoom Esc releases the cursor 1-0 / Left / Right - change the sky H spheres


by Matei Ioan Alexandru


Price History +

10 seamless 8K night-city skyboxes with true HDR light: lamps up to 24x brighter than the sky. HDR, EXR, PNG, materials and a demo scene. Built-in, URP, HDRP.

• 10 seamless equirectangular panoramas, 8192 × 4096 (2:1), 360° × 180°

• 10 × .hdr (Radiance RGBE, linear, true HDR, max value 24) - imported as Cubemap, Latitude-Longitude, BC6H, 2048 px faces, mipmaps

• 10 × .exr (16-bit half float, linear, same light range) - imported as 2D textures, Max Size 2048 (the source file stays 8K)

• 10 × .png (8-bit sRGB, 8192 × 4096) - imported as 2D textures, Max Size 2048 (the source file stays 8K)

• 10 skybox materials (Skybox/Cubemap)

• 1 demo scene (Built-in RP and URP), 3 demo scripts (C#), 1 demo shader, 3 demo materials

• HDRP support package: 10 Volume Profiles (Visual Environment, HDRI Sky, Exposure, Tonemapping, Bloom, Fog), 1 HDRP demo scene, 1 script, 3 HDRP/Lit materials

• Documentation: README.txt, CityLightsAtNight_Guide.pdf

• Unity 2022.3.11f1 or newer · Built-in · URP 14+ · HDRP 14+ · Linear color space recommended

• No dependencies on other packages · download size about 1.2 GB

▶ 4K video showcase: https://youtu.be/otT5NoycxiE


Night skylines that actually light your scene.

10 seamless 8K panoramas of modern cities after dark - rivers, harbours, marinas, canals and aerial views - stored as true HDR: street lamps, car lights and signs are up to 24× brighter than the sky, so they shine in reflections and light your scene instead of looking flat.

Unity: drag a material into the Lighting window and you are done - in the Built-in Render Pipeline, URP and HDRP.


✦ WHAT'S INSIDE

• 10 HDR cubemaps - 8192 × 4096 .hdr, imported as cubemaps with 2048 px faces (the full 8K detail), BC6H HDR compression

• 10 EXR + 10 PNG - the same panoramas as 16-bit half float EXR and 8K 8-bit PNG for your own tools and for mobile / WebGL

• 10 skybox materials - Skybox/Cubemap, ready to use, rotation and exposure on the material

• Demo scene - switch skies with 1-0 or the arrow keys, look around with the mouse, mirror / glossy / matte spheres

• HDRP support package - 10 Volume Profiles (HDRI Sky) + an HDRP demo scene

• Documentation - README and an illustrated PDF guide

River Metropolis · Harbour Bay Blue Hour · Aerial Downtown · Lakefront Skyline · Aerial River Bend · Marina Towers · Aerial Desert Metropolis · Canal City · Aerial Coastal City Blue Hour · Bridge Crossing


✦ TRUE HDR, NOT A STRETCHED PNG

• Lamps, car lights, signs - up to 24× the brightness of the sky

• Lit windows - about 6×, lit facades and light trails 1.6×

• Everything else - exactly the values of the preview, so at exposure 1 the sky looks like the screenshots

• Lower the exposure - the sky goes dark and the city lights stay bright, like a real night photo


✦ WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET

• In-engine screenshots - every sky picture is a capture from the included demo scene, 1920 × 1080 at a 70° field of view

• 100% crop - a 1:1 crop of the 8K file is in the gallery, so you can judge the detail before you buy

• Seamless - the left / right edge is checked on every panorama


✦ DEMO CONTROLS

• Mouse / W A S D - look around · Scroll zoom · Esc releases the cursor

• 1-0 / Left / Right - change the sky · H spheres · Tab text

• Any input setup - works with the old Input Manager and with the Input System package


✦ RENDER PIPELINES

• Built-in and URP - skybox materials + demo scene (the demo spheres use a small unlit shader that works in both)

• HDRP 14+ - import HDRP/CityLightsAtNight_HDRP.unitypackage: Volume Profiles with HDRI Sky, fixed exposure that matches the previews, light bloom


✦ USE CASES

Night city backgrounds · racing and driving games · rooftop and balcony scenes · architectural visualization · VR · cinematics · reflections on cars and glass


Good to know: the extra light range is rebuilt from the image (lamps, lit windows and facades), not captured with bracketed exposures - great for night highlights and reflections, not a measured light probe of a real place. Looking straight down, some panoramas are softer than at the horizon. Like any 8K panorama, a very narrow zoom on a 4K screen shows more pixels than the image has - a 60-90° field of view looks best.