Give your scene a city beyond the foreground.

DistantLightsFX by Skettch is a procedural city-background addon for Blender, designed for automotive renders, rolling shots and cinematic environments. Build the skyline, neighbourhoods and distant activity that bring depth to your composition.

Start with a lightweight layout draft, then complete the same city with detailed geometry, window interiors and animation.

SEVEN SKYLINE FLAVOURS

Choose Generic, Istanbul, Hong Kong, London, New York, Miami or Shanghai. Each flavour combines its own architectural character with procedural landmark models inspired by recognisable local structures.

These are art-directed city interpretations, not geographic reconstructions.

DRAFT FIRST. DETAIL WHEN READY.

Build Draft previews the layout with simple building masses, roads and terrain. Detail City completes the saved layout without generating a different arrangement.

Change the seed to explore new compositions. Camera movement does not automatically rebuild the city; dedicated camera-path and coverage tools let you update it when needed.

WINDOWS WITH CHARACTER

Give buildings more life with illuminated and unlit rooms, interior atlas imagery and lightweight parallax depth.

Wide windows can be divided by a centre mullion. Procedural roller shades, horizontal blinds, vertical blinds and curtains add varied openness states.

Adjust room colour, hue, saturation and brightness variation to mix warmer, neutral and cooler interiors without turning the skyline into random neon.

MORE THAN BUILDINGS

Populate the background with factories, shopping centres, parking structures, construction frames and tower cranes.

Add street lighting, animated traffic, trains, boats and helicopters. Waterfront facilities include compact piers, larger terminals and optional static, moored passenger ferries.

Available features and successful placement counts depend on the selected settings, terrain and available space.

TERRAIN THAT SUPPORTS THE CITY

Procedural terrain responds to building sites with fitted platforms and foundations. Camera clearances, keep-out areas and placement checks help keep generated elements away from your foreground.

Use the addon’s waterfront layouts or an assigned Water Object where supported.

DAY AND NIGHT

Switch between daytime and artificial-lighting modes. The optional built-in world uses Sky Texture, with mood-dependent night sun elevation.

Control the city’s glow and window lighting, or disable the built-in sky to use your own world setup.

BUILT FOR BACKGROUND WORK

DistantLightsFX focuses on distant and mid-distance city scenery. Keep your foreground hero assets under direct artistic control while the addon fills the wider environment.

Generated geometry uses regular meshes, with keyframed motion for animated elements. Stage descriptions and progress indicators make longer builds easier to follow.

INCLUDED

• DistantLightsFX Blender extension
• Seven skyline flavours
• Procedural building and landmark generators
• Interior and advertising texture atlases
• Animated background activity
• Waterfront piers and optional moored ferries
• Illustrated preset icons
• English installation and quick-start guide

Target Blender version: 5.2
Intended render engine: Cycles
Package version: 8.42.1
Installation: Install from Disk using the supplied ZIP
Internet connection: Not required for addon operation

Memory use and generation time depend on city extent, density, geometry detail and animation settings. No fixed minimum hardware specification or generation-time guarantee is provided.

The package has passed code and geometry checks. A complete Blender 5.2 installation and render validation has not yet been completed.

Skettch · 2026