Snow!

[pixela]

Hi Peter,
Your last image already looks very nice. I think it needs some variation on speckles. Maybe you can mask them with fractal noise to have more variation.
Good test

[bakbek]

A new snow creation plugin is available for all those of you that are into snowy scenes. check the post at blog about it - SnowFlow v1.6, 3d Studio Max Plugin.

If some of you test it, please share your thoughts about it here... how is it as apposed to pure particles workflow. From the videos it seems to be far better...

[rimbee]

Well, my 3dsmax 2009 quits with an eror message, when rendering the Pflow, which assigned to a Bercon Vray metaball object.

[matt]

here are some of my own tests...
the main goal was to test a kind of "simple" modeling method for the snow different than particules standard method that can be heavy to set up on complexe geometry objects like trees...

here is my workflow for an object like a tree:

>using the Ignore Backfacing option in editpoly mode to select top faces of all branches at the same time with region selection tool in the top view (sometimes it needs more actions to unselect for example parts of the trunk that could be selected even if they are almost vertical, or using the shrink/grow function to adejust selection)

>detach the selected faces to a new object that will be the snow, select all faces, extrude or bevel by group (bevel help to had a curved shape before using a meshsmooth tool)

>add a meshsmooth, turbosmooth to the snow part detached.

and voila, material is very simple using a combination of procedural maps in bump slot.

ofcourse each part of this method can be improved or modified to generate more or less detailed snow regarding wich kind of point of view you are working on, but its quite fast/easy to achieve a good looking result in few steps.

ofcourse i guess this could be easily scripted and improved with a minimal scripting skill (that i dont have)...

[arkinadamesref]

I always wanted to do a snow scene

[Javier Pintor]

Nice materials, I didn't know about this thread, here are my 2 cents.

[peterguthrie]

that looks great Javier! care to elaborate on the material?

Having watched the vray 2.0 feature videos by Torgeir at vray.info I have been experimenting with using a vray SSS2 material as a base for snow and then a vray carpaint material for the sparkles, mixed together using the vrayblendmaterial. Seems to work really well, no nice images to show yet though!

[Javier Pintor]

that looks great Javier! care to elaborate on the material?

Having watched the vray 2.0 feature videos by Torgeir at vray.info I have been experimenting with using a vray SSS2 material as a base for snow and then a vray carpaint material for the sparkles, mixed together using the vrayblendmaterial. Seems to work really well, no nice images to show yet though!

Thanks Peter. Hope the next image ilustrate the main snow material understable.

I used vray standard material blended with a light material to add some self illumination. I'm aswell using vray dirt in the opacity with glossy to create some SSS effect where the geometry intersect, a very small noise in the reflection and bump to create the sparkles, cellular displacement as I saw in the tutorial that Bertrand linked, it works prety well, and some other stuff. Everything togueter looks pretty simple.

One thing to point out is that this material looks ok in close shoots only, im trying to adapt it to a general view.

high res

[Javier Pintor]

I touch a bit the material and used it in conjuntion with the script annkos linked, pretty good script btw, and this are the results so far...

Looks cartoony to me. 3rd one is my fav, lightning seems more realistic for snow.

[Javier Pintor]

Ok, my last update. I rebuild the displacement and I think it does a pretty good job in the ground. I used 3 different snow materials, for the rocks, the tree and the ground.

[metrocubicodigital 3d]

Javier, that snow looks already so good. If somehow you could make a path blending with a mask the type of noise "foot prints" of your sand material in this snow, and give the snow a bit more size randomess in the displacement i think that would make it even more realistic.
Also perhaps insert all the diffuse snow map in a comp tex with vray dirt in order to make the snow look more grey and dirty when it encounters those rocks?

Cheers and very nice discussion. I wish it snowed in Portugal.

[Javier Pintor]

Javier, that snow looks already so good. If somehow you could make a path blending with a mask the type of noise "foot prints" of your sand material in this snow, and give the snow a bit more size randomess in the displacement i think that would make it even more realistic.
Also perhaps insert all the diffuse snow map in a comp tex with vray dirt in order to make the snow look more grey and dirty when it encounters those rocks?

Cheers and very nice discussion. I wish it snowed in Portugal.

Thank you very much! Right now im a bit busy with stuff not related to 3d but i take note of your advice for future update.

Here in Málaga doesn't snow aswell, at least in the coast hehe.