A cubemapA collection of six square textures that can represent the reflections in an environment or the skybox drawn behind your geometry. The six squares form the faces of an imaginary cube that surrounds an object; each face represents the view along the directions of the world axes (up, down, left, right, forward and back). More info
See in Glossary array is an array of cubemaps that are the same size and format, and that the GPU can access as a single texture resource. Cubemap arrays are often used for implementing efficient reflection probeA rendering component that captures a spherical view of its surroundings in all directions, rather like a camera. The captured image is then stored as a Cubemap that can be used by objects with reflective materials. More info
See in Glossary , lighting and shadowing systems.
To create a cubemap array in your Project, you must use a script.
The following example is an Editor script that creates an instance of the CubemapArray class, populates it with color data, and then saves it to your Project as a Texture Asset.
using UnityEngine;
using UnityEditor;
public class CreateCubeArrayTexture : MonoBehaviour
{
[UnityEditor.MenuItem("CreateExamples/CubemapArray")]
static void CreateCubemapArray()
{
// Configure the cubemap array and color data
int faceSize = 16;
int arraySize = 4;
int[] kCubeXRemap = new int[] { 2, 2, 0, 0, 0, 0 };
int[] kCubeYRemap = new int[] { 1, 1, 2, 2, 1, 1 };
int[] kCubeZRemap = new int[] { 0, 0, 1, 1, 2, 2 };
float[] kCubeXSign = new float[] { -1.0F, 1.0F, 1.0F, 1.0F, 1.0F, -1.0F };
float[] kCubeYSign = new float[] { -1.0F, -1.0F, 1.0F, -1.0F, -1.0F, -1.0F };
float[] kCubeZSign = new float[] { 1.0F, -1.0F, 1.0F, -1.0F, 1.0F, -1.0F };
var baseCols = new Color[] { Color.white, new Color(1, .5f, .5f, 1), new Color(.5f, 1, .5f, 1), new Color(.5f, .5f, 1, 1), Color.gray };
// Create an instance of CubemapArray
var tex = new CubemapArray(faceSize, arraySize, TextureFormat.ARGB32, true);
tex.filterMode = FilterMode.Trilinear;
// Iterate over each cubemap
var col = new Color[tex.width * tex.width];
float invSize = 1.0f / tex.width;
for (var i = 0; i < tex.cubemapCount; ++i)
{
var baseCol = baseCols[i % baseCols.Length];
// Iterate over each face of the current cubemap
for (var face = 0; face < 6; ++face)
{
var idx = 0;
Vector3 signScale = new Vector3(kCubeXSign[face], kCubeYSign[face], kCubeZSign[face]);
// Iterate over each pixel of the current face
for (int y = 0; y < tex.width; ++y)
{
for (int x = 0; x < tex.width; ++x)
{
// Calculate a "normal direction" color for the current pixel
Vector3 uvDir = new Vector3(x * invSize * 2.0f - 1.0f, y * invSize * 2.0f - 1.0f, 1.0f);
uvDir = uvDir.normalized;
uvDir.Scale(signScale);
Vector3 dir = Vector3.zero;
dir[kCubeXRemap[face]] = uvDir[0];
dir[kCubeYRemap[face]] = uvDir[1];
dir[kCubeZRemap[face]] = uvDir[2];
// Shift the color into the 0.4..1.0 range
Color c = new Color(dir.x * 0.3f + 0.7f, dir.y * 0.3f + 0.7f, dir.z * 0.3f + 0.7f, 1.0f);
// Add a pattern to some pixels, so that mipmaps are more clearly visible
if (((x ^ y) & 3) == 1)
c *= 0.5f;
// Tint the color with the baseCol tint
col[idx] = baseCol * c;
++idx;
}
}
// Copy the color values for this face to the texture
tex.SetPixels(col, (CubemapFace)face, i);
}
}
// Apply the changes to the texture and upload the updated texture to the GPU
tex.Apply();
// Save the texture to your Unity Project
AssetDatabase.CreateAsset(tex, "Assets/ExampleCubemapArray.asset");
UnityEditor.AssetDatabase.SaveAssets();
}
}