Physical Atmosphere² generates insanely detailed Blender skies
Physical Addons has released Physical Atmosphere², a successor to its popular Physical Starlight and Atmosphere plugin for Blender.
As well as realistic day and night skies, it makes it possible to add true spectral atmospheres to Blender scenes, complete with ozone controls and even realistic atmospheric pollution.
A more powerful successor the the popular PSA add-on for games, VFX and visualization
Physical Addons already develops one of the most widely used Blender add-ons for adding realistic day and night skies to Blender scenes: Physical Starlight and Atmosphere (PSA).
Since its release in 2020, it has notched up over 17,000 sales on Superhive alone, with Physical Addons listing artists at NASA, Renault and game developers like Ubisoft and 343 Industries among its users.
Physical Atmosphere² takes PSA’s capabilities and cranks them up to 11, adding a true spectral atmosphere with multiple scattering, and even settings that reflect real-world air pollution.
A brilliantly named ‘stupidly advanced mode’ lets users access all of the underlying settings, including controls for scattering, ozone, atmospheric aerosols and fog.
It is also possible to render the atmosphere in views of the Earth from space, not just from ground level.
Should run on mid-level GPUs if initial issues are addressed
The add-on has relatively low system requirements: the most intensive part, volumetric clouds, need a mid-level desktop GPU, like a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 or AMD Radeon RX 6600.
The atmosphere component is much lighter and should even run on integrated graphics.
However, early reviews on Superhive pointed to performance and stability issues with the initial release, particularly with clouds.
Physical Addons has since put out a number of updates that it says should fix most of the issues, but you may want to keep an eye on the recent ratings.
Price and system requirements
Physical Atmosphere² is compatible with Blender 5.2+. It is currently in beta. Perpetual licences cost $118. Users of Physical Starlight and Atmosphere can upgrade at a 70% discount.
Read more about Physical Atmosphere² for Blender on Superhive
Have your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we don’t post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.