Planetside Software Forums

General => Image Sharing => Topic started by: Dune on October 27, 2021, 02:21:31 AM

Title: Snow
Post by: Dune on October 27, 2021, 02:21:31 AM
Well, it's that time of year again, leaves falling, wind howling, rain pouring down. Hopefully we'll be having some of that old-fashioned snow again this year.... you know, like before climate change. Speaking for my Dutch ground, of course.
Title: Re: Snow
Post by: Hannes on October 27, 2021, 02:40:36 AM
Fantastic!!!!! This looks incredibly realistic. I love the snow clumps. Although the second image is more or less a crop of the first (I think...), I almost prefer it. The lighting is so natural, and I can smell the air,
Title: Re: Snow
Post by: DocCharly65 on October 27, 2021, 03:03:36 AM
You call them "snowtest", Ulco? I call them wonderful!

I love the overall ambience and especially the sparkling of the snow!
Title: Re: Snow
Post by: Dune on October 27, 2021, 06:41:52 AM
Thanks guys. Well, it started out as a simple test for a snow shader, hoping to include the sparks into the overall reflectivity (you know, some sort of combined soft/wide and narrow/small/hard roughness mask), but in the end I had to add extra reflections by tiny fake stones (used as mask) and distance.
And then I thought; let's add some stuff....
I like the crop as well, that was the original size of the whole thing.

Snow clumps I quite quickly made in ZBrush; just importing the shrub and Dynameshing the leaves, some pulling and inflating, remeshing, voila. I still need to do a test with subsurface methods, hoping to get it to work in SR.
Title: Re: Snow
Post by: Kadri on October 27, 2021, 06:48:01 AM
I love this Ulco.
It feels different from your other work as well. Probably because of the lighting-colour palette.
Title: Re: Snow
Post by: Dune on October 27, 2021, 09:46:40 AM
Thanks Kadri.

I added some of the sparks (with distance) to the snow clump objects, and also masked the opacity by a 1mm fractal. It gives sort of the illusion of transparency (see color adjusted and enlarged crop). Perhaps a tad too much, but at least it works. Doing this with a glass shader and SSS is a no-go for me; too slow.
Title: Re: Snow
Post by: DocCharly65 on October 27, 2021, 10:59:35 AM
I needed a long and close look to thr cropped render to find out that the snow on the bushes has a bit too smooth surface. In the overall view of the complete picture it' not visible for me. Very good solution.
Title: Re: Snow
Post by: Hannes on October 27, 2021, 11:54:49 AM
I totally agree with Nils.
Title: Re: Snow
Post by: mhaze on October 27, 2021, 12:55:53 PM
Fantastic! pushing terragen to its limit again!
Title: Re: Snow
Post by: Jo Kariboo on October 27, 2021, 01:06:00 PM
Excellent !
Title: Re: Snow
Post by: Dune on October 27, 2021, 01:33:44 PM
Yes, the snow chunks were maybe a bit too quickly made, too smooth. I've found a nice ref.
Title: Re: Snow
Post by: masonspappy on October 27, 2021, 02:57:19 PM
Beautiful!
Title: Re: Snow
Post by: Lady of the Lake on October 27, 2021, 07:57:52 PM
Excellent.  No other words needed. :) :) :)
Title: Re: Snow
Post by: Hannes on October 28, 2021, 02:27:10 AM
How did you make these clumps? Are they populated onto objects. I guess not, since you can't populate on populations, right?
Title: Re: Snow
Post by: Dune on October 28, 2021, 09:15:25 AM
No, I just took the shrub(s) I wanted them for and dynameshed the leaves in ZBrush, and after some additional pushing and shoving and smoothing I exported again as snow-clumps, specific for that shrub. So when populating you have to use the exact same location, spaces, sizes and seed. The only thing I did, not to have them allover, was to add a world opacity mask (PF). though that wil no doubt also cut some object parts in half. As they're snowclumps that didn't bother me too much.
Title: Re: Snow
Post by: Hannes on October 28, 2021, 10:02:05 AM
Cool! Thanks for the explanation, Ulco! Clever.
Title: Re: Snow
Post by: WAS on October 28, 2021, 11:58:57 AM
3DM Snow or Real Snow in Blender works pretty good for adding snow to objects. Just unfortunately not with card parts. Just select parts and apply. Can even tilt the tree for that wind-direction snow build-up on the trunk.
Title: Re: Snow
Post by: Dune on October 28, 2021, 12:24:49 PM
In ZBrush if several cards or flat parts are crossing, dynamesh will make that a hump. The Blender method sounds interesting too.
Title: Re: Snow
Post by: WAS on October 28, 2021, 12:30:06 PM
I think the issue in Blender is we need a wee bit more control. Cards can be clumped, but I think it works off faces, so the whole card is a face and thus a whole huge clump.