by CG Choco·Rendering
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Natural Sky earns its place in the Blender library for delivering a full day-night sky through a shader-based system rather than a script. It's Cycles-only with no Eevee support, and the developer is upfront that it suits experienced users over beginners.
Natural Sky is a photorealistic sky system for Blender 2.8 and 2.9 that builds its lighting from shaders rather than a script. It offers a full, animatable 24-hour day cycle, with time driven by the keyable "time" parameter. You can customize the horizontal position and size of the sun and moon, add volumetric clouds with cloud movement, and adjust stars and fog to shape the scene.
Setup works three ways. Import your 3D models straight into the Natural Sky .blend file, append the Natural Sky collection into an existing project, or save the .blend as your start-up file so the sky is available in every new project. When appending, the developer recommends setting the scene scale factor to 1 and optimizing render settings. The system is designed to support large exterior environments up to 64 km².
Natural Sky is made for the Cycles render engine and does not support Eevee. Because it uses volumetrics, viewport performance can be slow during scene creation, which the developer frames as a general Blender limitation. It is not recommended for beginners, and documentation plus a step-by-step guide are provided for first-time setup.
Realistic Sky System For Blender 2.8 And Newer (Sale -50% Off) is best for blender artists working in Cycles on exterior renders who want photorealistic sky lighting and are comfortable enough with the software to handle setup and performance tuning.
Realistic Sky System For Blender 2.8 And Newer (Sale -50% Off) is completely free to download and use.
Natural Sky was created for the Cycles render engine and does not support Eevee. Because it relies on volumetric elements like clouds and fog, expect the viewport to run slowly during scene creation, which the developer notes is a general Blender limitation with volumes rather than a fault of the add-on. The suggested approach is to keep render and viewport samples under 10 while building the scene and raise them for the final render, with denoising recommended. CPU tends to be faster for viewport rendering and GPU faster for the final output.
Natural Sky is built for Blender 2.8 and 2.9. It works through a shader-based system rather than a script, so the sky lighting comes from the shader setup itself. The developer recommends reading the step-by-step guide the first time you use it, which covers topics such as optimizations and camera clipping. It is not recommended for Blender beginners, since setting it up well and managing performance assumes some familiarity with the software. Documentation is included to help you get started.
Natural Sky can be used three ways. You can import your 3D models directly into the Natural Sky .blend file, append the Natural Sky collection into your existing project, or save the Natural Sky .blend as your start-up file so the sky is ready in every new project. If you append the collection, the developer advises setting your scene scale factor to 1 and optimizing your project's render settings. The developer's FAQ page covers these steps in more detail.
Natural Sky is designed for detailed renders and needs a reasonably capable machine to run properly. It was created on a medium-power setup with a Core i7 3770, an AMD RX 480 graphics card, and 16 GB of RAM, and the developer recommends equivalent or more powerful hardware. Since the system uses volumetric clouds and fog, the viewport can be slow while you build a scene. Keeping samples low during setup, raising them for the final render, and using a denoiser all help with performance.
Natural Sky is listed as free in this catalog. Pricing and licensing can change over time, so check the developer's page for the current terms before you download. The tool is distributed as a Blender .blend file that you can import into, append from, or set as your start-up file, and documentation is included. Keep in mind it targets Blender 2.8 and 2.9 and the Cycles render engine, with no Eevee support.
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