Atlas Sky Dome Layer ☁

AtlasSkyDomeLayer is the node that separates the sky from everything else and projects it onto a simple constant-depth card instead of a depth-following relief mesh. That's the standard digital matte painting move - the same one Nuke artists have used for decades - and it exists because sky depth from monocular models is noisy and meaningless. There's no real "depth" to a sky; it's just wherever the segmentation mask ends. Fighting that with geometry is a waste, so this node doesn't: the sky_mask is the sole authority on the layer's shape, and real depth values are never read for the card's geometry.

The workflow the README describes is honest about where the clean sky comes from: invert the sky mask, run the original photo through an external inpaint chain (INPAINT_ExpandMask → INPAINT_InpaintWithModel or similar - LaMa-style), and wire the result in as plate_image. This node doesn't invent sky pixels; it places the clean sky you already made onto the dome. The mask decides what's sky, the dome decides where it sits.

Inputs that matter

• solve, depth, sky_mask, plate_image - the required quartet. depth is required but only used for context - the card's shape ignores it, which is the whole point.
• radius_m vs distance_m - the two modes, and the fiddliest part. With distance_m at 0 (legacy): radius_m is the card's distance in metres, and it should comfortably exceed the scene's own backdrop distance so the card never intersects real geometry. With distance_m set: radius_m becomes the card's minimum half-extent - its size - and the card grows (never shrinks below frustum coverage) via extra outpaint until it reaches that world size. Distance drives parallax; size drives orbit/pan slack. Read that tooltip twice; it's the difference between a dome that hides its edge and one that doesn't.
• edge_extend_px - the Nuke premult→dilate trick: smear the sky's edge colours a few dozen pixels past the silhouette and overhang the dome mesh, so a small orbit reveals plausible gradient sky instead of black slivers. 0 = off.
• frame_outpaint_px - same deterministic trick, but past the frame edges, so a small pan doesn't slam into the plate boundary. The sky source gets its own enlarged canvas and widened intrinsics; the primary solve is untouched.
• relief_grid, name, priority - mesh density (96 default is plenty for a flat card), the layer name, and blend priority (default −10, low, since the mask makes it spatially exclusive anyway).

Outputs: the updated solve, hole_mask, extend_mask (where it overhung), and a report.

The gotcha worth remembering

This is the honest part of the pack: a flat dome with dilated edges covers narrow disocclusions of smooth sky beautifully, and it will not save you on large structured reveals - clouds popping out from behind a building still need a real LaMa/inpaint chain on the plate. Don't blame the dome for a job it was never meant to do.

Install

The node itself is core, but it needs a solve, a depth map (the [neural] tier - torch + GeoCalib + Depth Anything V2, or the MoGe/DA3 backends), and a real sky mask from AtlasSAM3Mask ([sam3]):

cd <ComfyUI>/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/mikejamesvfx/atlas-camera.git

Restart, or install the pack via ComfyUI Manager ("atlas-camera"). It's under Atlas/07 · Clean Plate & Inpaint. First run will download the depth model weights - that's the slow bit, not the install.