Physical Starlight and Atmosphere Addon for 2.9 (v1.4) - now with Clouds!

There will be a sperate payed addon with will add celecist objects like a moon.
For now, there is no moon.

The clouds don’t look really good, at the moment.
They plan also a seprate payed addon, with highly improved clouds.
For now, I recommend using VDB clouds.

However, it is nevertheless a great addon. I prever it over HDRIs.

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Where do you have the infos from about these upcoming separate addons ?
Why do the clouds it look good in your opinion. would you mind elaborate on that ?

Thank you for the tipp about VDB clouds, i will look into it !

Have a good one

They mentioned it here somewhere in the thread and also on their discord (including some preview images about the celestial addon on discord).

The PSA clouds looks more like painted, but not real, because they miss volume.
VDB clouds are real 3D objects, but slow to render and you need expensive and complicated software (like Houdini) to generate them or you buy some VDB clouds. While you can’t create them in Blender, you can easily use pre-made VDB clouds.

Just compare these two images. In the first one I just use the clouds from PSA:

and in the second one I use only the sky and sun from PSA, but clouds are VDB clouds

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I must admit that I am a little bit annoyed that better looking clouds will be a separate add-on, given the already relatively steep price tag for PSA, slow development and somewhat limited functionality. But I understand there is a lot of rnd involved. I’m really looking forward to the water add-on that was teased last summer if it ever comes out, lol.

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Hi @Megalosaurus

But I understand there is a lot of rnd involved

It is unfortunately as you say. The first version of the PSA was a single init.py file (779 lines) which lacked quite a lot of functionality (not intentionally, but as time went by we got to know the ways the product was being used) and was developed by an individual (an amazing one).

Because of the love and support of our users we have grown into a real company. We try to carefully scale the company. Since the last week, we are a team of four (R&D, 2xDEVS, Customer Support) and are still day to day wearing many hats to get everything done.

As the team expands we are in a need of a better internal structure - for example internal documentation, getting used to regular communication and meetings and implementing automated tests (which I was working on a minute ago) to provide better quality products and more regular releases.

I’m really looking forward to the water add-on that was teased last summer if it ever comes out, lol.

In upcoming weeks we are releasing Physical Celestial Objects (PCO) which will let you create physically accurate planets on a real scale with just a few clicks. Our main R&D Martinsh will take some time off as he’s on his 2nd parental leave :raised_hands: in the upcoming days. We hope to start active development on the water addon when we will have refined PCO issues and Martinsh completely returned ~ my estimate would be September.

P.S. thank you @stger for helping out the community. It means a lot :heart:

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Agreed

/CG

Sounds promising, can’t wait to try it out!

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Is the Discord still going? I can’t seem to find a working invite link anywhere.

There’s always one at https://www.physicaladdons.com/psa/#pricing section, but yeah - we lack it on Blender Market and Gumroad store pages.

Here’s an invite: https://discord.gg/wvzPVzj9Vr

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I purchased and downloaded the physical-starlight-atmosphere-1.5.2 add-on a couple of days ago and while the sky and light effects in the scenes are quite impressive, the rendertime has doubled… something that I can live with, but what alarms me is the following issue that has occured three times by now:
I sit and play with the addon settings and suddenly when I press “activate fog” certain buildings instantly lose their material - in the material view port preview as well as when rendered. Most buildings keep their material. If I save the file, the problem remains when I open it again, so its not some temporary memory issue. Ive worked with Blender since 2009 and I´ve NEVER seen anything so weird, thats why I ask for Sherlock Holmes to solve the mystery. - because I really need that fog effect.

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Hi!
I’ve never heard of this happening. Please consider joinoig our discord here: https://discord.gg/ZmJqpGUb All of the devs try to stay on-top of the issues there, aswell the community could offer some tips!
-Reina

I have an issue (Version 1.5.2), when started the world it came in upside down; has anyone have the same problem? I am using the Blender daily built (3.3)

Yes, for me, PSA also greatly reduces my performance.

And I have a Nvidia Quadro RTX 8000 :joy:

I think also the development of PSA is a slow and unsatisfying one.

Comparing to this:

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I‘ve both. Pure Sky and PSA and I prefer PSA over Pure Sky because PSA is easier and faster for me.

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Physical Starlight and Atmosphere is generated by HDRI ?

it’s a procedual world shader and an autoalignment of the sun node to the world shader.

but uses some HDRI feature?
if yes, is it procedural or is it made with images?

Thank you for your help

would you know how to teach me just how to control:
intensity and color of the light of the sky ?

do you have a manual or detailed tutorial for the addon?
mainly about the sun and light of the sky ?

thank you so much

What is your question actually, you seemed to have quotes my reply. I did not see a question or explanation of what your use case is?

I feel you, there is another addon which has amazing clouds and it’s all in one. The problem i see :slightly_smiling_face: s that it’s not a single person now working on this, but a team of four. That’s quite a lot already

Hope they think about users which already own a part. Not sure if the cloud addon will work without using PSA actually. I believe eve at first the idea was to add it to this one. But i guess with 4 people working on it, they need model to make money