How to add an image as a camera background in Unity

The camera in Unity allows the setting of the background as a solid colour but not as an image. The camera is currently rendering the image below.

Let's look at how we can set it up to render a background image instead of a plain colour.

Adding a Canvas

1. Start by creating a new canvas.
2. Update the properties
   1. Update Render Mode to Screen Space - Camera:
      • Screen Space - Overlay should be used only for the foreground UI. It renders the canvas on top of everything else, including the camera view.
      • Screen Space - Camera will render the canvas on a plane object in front of the camera. It will also automatically rescale to fit the view.
   2. Set the Render Camera
      • Drag and drop the camera from the scene.
   3. Update Plane Distance (if needed):
      • Plane Distance is used to set the z-position for the canvas. You can increase it if some scene objects are hidden behind it.
   4. Remove/Disable the Graphics Raycaster
      • Disabling the Graphics Raycaster makes the canvas non-interactive, i.e. it will not capture clicks etc.

Add the background image

1. Create an Image inside of the canvas.
2. Set the Source Image to the background sprite.

3. Stretch your image to fill the (canvas) container.

• You can do this by clicking the grey square in the Rect Transform. In the window that opens, hold down Alt and click the most bottom-right square.

Conclusion

Now the image will show as the background.