When I started to create realistic planet Earth renders 7 years ago, I had never expected that one of the hardest elements to execute was the atmosphere. Especially Rayleigh Scattering.

The most important aspects of getting the Atmosphere to look right are:

• Stacking Volumetric shaders that absorb white light and scatter different colors
• Figuring out a way to convert the Rayleigh formula to your render engine
• Using anisotropic values to scatter different light colors towards or away from the camera
• Applying an Atmospheric density texture to define thickness

Anything else? Yes, so much more! All of which I cover in the following blogpost.