Thick snow

[Dune]

As the title says.

[DocCharly65]

The snow in the background looks perfect.
The snow in the foreground still looks good but somehow "dry". I don't know if reflectivity helps?

[sjefen]

This is awesome! I'm envious now.
This is what I'm trying to make 

[masonspappy]

Beautiful!
Snow is deceptively hard to get looking real.

[Dune]

Yes, I struggled to get a 'wet' look on the snow, but that's pretty hard. I think a bit of RT reflectivity may help, but that takes much longer than no-RT reflectivity. I might have another go. Or a mix with a glass shader to get 'real' transparent toplayer.

@Sjefen: don't be envious, I told you how this is done in your thread. Just experiment a bit with the basic principle of a smoothish (small details 1-2m) terrain, and a almost completely white mask to mask a surface shader and then set offset a bit higher to raise all but the black parts of that mask and color it snowy white. I followed this up with an extra compute normal within that child input line of shaders for some lateral displacement, but that comes later.
You can't do this from a small detailed (or finely fractal warped) terrain, you've got to start smooth, and fill in the black masked areas with things like stones of fine displacement, whatever you want.

[zaxxon]

Wonderful snow!

[bobbystahr]

As the title says.

I was a little 'thick' of snow by the time it all melted, hee hee hee

[Cocateho]

I think this looks really good in general, but maybe the reason the its not working so well in the foreground is indeed the dry appearance. The texture would be great for fresh powder snow, and the overall lumpy texture looks awesome in the background, but since it gives the impression it should be melting maybe it just needs a bit less "grain" and just a glossier appearance to reflect the icyness?

[Dune]

I'll try some things.

Found some refs, but actually it doesn't look thát wet, but lighter in the shadows and more displacement.

[Dune]

Some small changes.

[sjefen]

It's beautiful 

- Terje

[luvsmuzik]

The added flakiness is awesome. Wonderful! The pine is not a photo?

[j meyer]

To my eyes the foreground snow still looks too solid and dry.
Reflectivity is noticeable, but still....
Maybe some fake stones for a little sparkle would do.

[Dune]

No, pines are Speedtree pines with ZBrush added lumps (I think these are those) and procedurally patched snow on branches and needles.

I spent a few hours getting all to sparkle more, but it's pretty hard. There are already fake stones to 1. get tiny displacements, and 2. mask extra sparkle, but if the sun is just too far off, there's no sparkle. So I added another sun just ahead, and that works, but shadows don't need sparkle, so it's not perfect. I also experimented with lower (or higher) refraction index and roughness, and also with a mix of soft light grey and white pinpoint pf mask to feed the roughness. Adding another (RT- or noRT) reflective shader after the default snow stuff got me some dark spots, so that doesn't help either. Merging them works better, but I'm still not satisfied. Merging with a glass shader made it too dark (shadow), so I've had quite enough of it by now. Sprinkling the front with snow crystal objects might be the best, but well, they would be millions. I might have another go, though...

[dorianvan]

The last one looks fantastic Ulco. What do you mean by added lumps?