Skip to content

Getting started

Physical Atmosphere² (PA2) is a Blender add-on that puts a complete, realistic sky into your scene: atmosphere, sunlight, volumetric clouds, sun, moon, planets and stars. Pick a real place, date and time on Earth, or simply drag the sun where you want it, and the add-on lights your scene to match. Everything updates live in the viewport.

Requirements

  • Blender 5.2.0+
  • The Vulkan backend is recommended (Preferences > System > Display Graphics > Backend). The add-on works on OpenGL but shows a warning, since it is developed and tested against Vulkan.
Atmosphere only Clouds*
Specs Any GPU (even integrated) that runs Blender 5.2 comfortably, laptops included. Desktop-class GPU: RTX 3060 / RX 6600 or better.
What to expect Runs almost anywhere. Sky, sun, moon, planets and stars update in real time even on modest laptops. Drag the sun, scrub time, it keeps up. Working with clouds in the viewport will be slow. Volumetric clouds are the heaviest part of the add-on, even for high-end GPUs at higher quality settings. Navigate on Low quality with Temporal AA on: the image refines to full quality the moment the camera rests. Higher presets are for final frames, not for flying around.

*We're currently working on cloud optimisation to make clouds faster in the viewport on lower performing devices.

Installation

Info

"Physical Atmosphere²" is only available for purchase on Superhive (formerly Blender Market). Get your latest version there.

Physical Atmosphere² ships as a Blender extension:

  • Download the physical_atmosphere2_v[version].zip file.
  • Open Blender.
  • Drag and drop the .zip file into the Blender window and confirm. That's it.
  • Alternatively: go to Edit > Preferences > Get Extensions, click the dropdown arrow in the top-right corner, choose Install from Disk... and locate the .zip file.

Permissions

During installation Blender will list two permissions the extension asks for:

  • Network — used only to download live GFS weather data for cloud maps and to auto-detect your location. Everything else works fully offline.
  • Files — used to save generated cloud maps into a folder you choose.

First Run

  • In the 3D Viewport, open the Sidebar (also called the N Panel) and click the Atmosphere² tab.
  • Click the + Add Atmosphere button.
  • The sky appears and the panel fills with settings. The same panel is also available in Properties > World.

What happens when the atmosphere is added?

The add-on sets up its own World for the active scene. The sky, the sun light and everything you see is rendered and kept up to date by the add-on from then on. Remove Atmosphere (at the bottom of the panel) takes it all out again.

Choose your interface layout

At the top of the panel you can pick how much of the add-on you want to see:

  • Simple — just a sky: location, time, clouds, exposure and a quality preset. One screen, no science. This is the default.
  • Advanced — the full working set: physics toggles, individual cloud layers, rendering settings.
  • Scientific — every knob there is. Meant for research and calibration work; you will likely never need it for rendering.

This documentation covers the Simple and Advanced layouts. The Scientific layout will get its own, more technical documentation later.

A quick tour (Simple layout)

  • Sky & Observer — choose Artistic to drag the sun and moon wherever you like, or Earth to use a real location, date and time. In Earth mode you can search for your city or auto-detect your location.
  • Post Processing — exposure and white balance.
  • Atmosphere — how clean or polluted the air is, and how much haze it carries.
  • Clouds — one slider: cloud coverage.
  • Stars — star brightness at night.
  • Quality — one preset dropdown that balances quality against speed.

When you want more control (cloud layers, weather maps, the moon and planets), switch to Advanced and head to the documentation.