Creating a day and night cycle with the Animation View

In this recipe, we will create a simple day and night cycle animation using the Animation View.

Getting ready

We are going to create this recipe from scratch in Unity, so we don't need any additional assets. You can also use the provided example Unity project and go to the Chapter 07 Special effects\Recipe 10 Creating a day and night cycle with the animation window directory. You will find an Example.unity scene there.

 

Open it and play the game to see the effect.

Simple day and night cycle

How to do it...

To create a day and night cycle with the Animation View, follow these steps:

1. Create an empty game object and call it DayAndNight.
2. Create another empty game object, call it SunAndMoonPivot, and parent it to the DayAndNight game object.
3. Create two more game objects, SunPivot and MoonPivot, and parent them to SunAndMoonPivot.
4. Then create the Sun and Moon objects and parent the first one to SunPivot and the second one to MoonPivot.
5. Lastly, create...