I don't have much time to elaborate on the process involved in creating this image.
The snow is a single surface layer with displacement intersection setting.
Grasses are the built-in from TG2 + the two grasses from Klas. Splendid models!
Rendered in 3,5 hours @ detail 0.9, AA 8 and GI 1/1.
I'll improve this version later because beside the snow there isn't much of interest.
Martin
This is looking very promosing, Martin! Maybe a little less roughness would do the snow look well, but I'm sure you will get there :-)
Regards,
Frank
did you add some reflectivity to the snow ?
Thanks guys :)
Frank: I'll see what I can do about the smoothness. I can tell you: it's really difficult since the smoothness is already at max. I think I should try a different approach then. Will think about it.
Franck: yes I added very very little reflectivity. Why so?
Martin, it looks as if the roughness comes from the underlying fractal detail added by a heightfield shader. Could that be it?
You could also try to change the interpolation method in the heightfield shader to over-smooth, and then add roughtness to the terrain by yourself, excluding the areas where the snow lives.
Cheers,
Frank
I'll send you the tgd tonight to show my workflow.
The snowshader is the latest in the chain.
The terrain is already very smooth. Almost all the displacement and roughness from the terrain is from fake stones only.
It's a good idea and I'll take a look how to...thanks :)
as I told you the smoothing function reverts displacements up to the last compute terrain (to the best of my knowledge), but in case your heightfield shader added fractal detail, that was even before the compute terrain, hence these displacements will prevail.
I'm taking guesse here, so I'm interested in hearing back later if I was right :-)
Cheers,
Frank
Quote from: FrankB on February 02, 2009, 04:50:54 AM
as I told you the smoothing function reverts displacements up to the last compute terrain (to the best of my knowledge), but in case your heightfield shader added fractal detail, that was even before the compute terrain, hence these displacements will prevail.
I'm taking guesse here, so I'm interested in hearing back later if I was right :-)
Cheers,
Frank
Yes I took that aspect into account and if I recall correctly there is fractal detail added before the compute terrain (since it is the default setting and I barely touch that) although it is really really smooth.
Nonetheless, that could cause the roughness.
Another thing I haven't seen mentioned - some transparency. Melting snow gets less and less opacity.
Anyway, nice idea and it's looking pretty good.
Quote from: calico on February 02, 2009, 08:41:13 AM
Another thing I haven't seen mentioned - some transparency. Melting snow gets less and less opacity.
Anyway, nice idea and it's looking pretty good.
Thanks Calico :)
Regarding the transparency: translucency isn't really suitable for this purpose because the snow gets a strange hue.
So I'm not sure yet how to achieve this. Since you miss it you may know it?
You know me, TU. If you don't know it, I am likely to not know it. But, I was depending upon translucency. Is the blue that far off...hmmm, makes me think about snow - it usually has a slight hue of blue. Maybe if you began with a little blue in your main snow, it would look different when using a little translucency? Or have you tried it?
Quote from: calico on February 02, 2009, 09:21:22 AM
You know me, TU. If you don't know it, I am likely to not know it. But, I was depending upon translucency. Is the blue that far off...hmmm, makes me think about snow - it usually has a slight hue of blue. Maybe if you began with a little blue in your main snow, it would look different when using a little translucency? Or have you tried it?
I haven't tried it....I did it in this image ;D lol
Maybe I should work more on the translucency...adjusting the tint could be the trick.
Ahhh. I see now. :P
Maybe there's a way to blend the melted with a water shader then play with transparency a bit. Then it might look like ice, though.
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on February 02, 2009, 09:33:13 AM
I haven't tried it....I did it in this image ;D lol
Maybe I should work more on the translucency...adjusting the tint could be the trick.
Frank: I've managed to get the snow smoother but now the snowpatch doesn't breakup at the edge so I'll have to find a way to achieve this.
Will post a small testrender later hopefully :)
Martin
I would actually consider using a water shader for the snow with low reflectivity and very high volume settings. We're currently sitting in about three feet of snow here, and I thought about it a little and the larger swaths are very smooth and opaque, but after melting for a while it gets some jagged edges and some of the little bits of ice become clear as water, especially on the edges.
Quote from: old_blaggard on February 02, 2009, 02:35:37 PM
I would actually consider using a water shader for the snow with low reflectivity and very high volume settings. We're currently sitting in about three feet of snow here, and I thought about it a little and the larger swaths are very smooth and opaque, but after melting for a while it gets some jagged edges and some of the little bits of ice become clear as water, especially on the edges.
I don't really agree with the three feet :) It's supposed to look like one foot, maybe 1,5 feet at most. Anyway, not important. You're right about the appearance of the large swath (learned a new word today :)) and the melting parts..I'll see what I can do to mask them.
The watershader idea is good, I'll start with that as soon as I have the basic shape of the snow patch good.
This is vary nice, the only thing that is missing that I can see is melt water between the stony landscape and the melt interface of the snow which is what you'd see in such situations in real life as is shown in the photograph (Sorry best I could find) on this page http://www.warmzone.com/SnowMelting/blueheat-works.asp except that there would be more of it.
Regards to you.
Cyber-Angel
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on February 02, 2009, 02:39:23 PM
I don't really agree with the three feet :)
Sorry, I was unclear: I meant to say that my town is currently three feet deep in snow in the real world - I agree that it looks like you've got a foot or so here. However, the consistency of the snow would be the same regardless, so good luck on your tests!
Quote from: old_blaggard on February 02, 2009, 08:05:00 PM
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on February 02, 2009, 02:39:23 PM
I don't really agree with the three feet :)
Sorry, I was unclear: I meant to say that my town is currently three feet deep in snow in the real world - I agree that it looks like you've got a foot or so here. However, the consistency of the snow would be the same regardless, so good luck on your tests!
Ah ok, I see :) lol
Well, here's the second version!
Martin
snow is white, the blue or pink colour that can be seen sometimes is the result of "reflectivity" of the atmosphere... I am not sure adding blue colours to the shader of the snow is a good idea... but i think working more on reflectivity 'or water shader" as calico suggested might be a good idea.
the shape and texture looks good but it doesn't look like snow to me Martin... it looks like some ice-cream thing or something... ^^
agree with Seth, you've probably been carried away with experimenting late at night I suppose ;-)
Other than the colors, this is really looking good. Excellent shapes, I find it believable! And it's a nice composition too, with the wood in the background.
This looks more natural in my eyes (although I must admit that I got almost snow blind trying to re-balance colors in this):
The snow shape is looking great now. The colours, specular highlights and details on the snow need to be modified/added for realism.
Please check the photo as an example of what I mean.
Regards,
Saurav
Thanks guys!
I did some slight postwork in 2 minutes or so because I had to go to work.
Yours looks better indeed Frank.
Seth:
I don't really agree with you that the snow looks like ice-cream or so.
When I smoothend the surface below the snow the snow became smooth as well as Frank predicted. The problem was that I had to start all over again finding the right displacement intersection settings.
Maybe I should render it at higher res and settings so you'll see that there are also many small bumpy details which look very realistic. I over-estimated the rendertime for this (just 3 hours @ 0.9, AA 8 and GI 1/1) so I didn't render it bigger overnight.
The snow already has quite a blue/gray color (intensity is 0.64!).
Regarding the watershader: I've tried many many ways to get the watershader applied properly to this surface with very limited succes. I had a density shader connected to the water shader and cranked up its density to about 500 which gave the snow a more solid look. But the transparency is lost and if I increase it I have to increase the density shader as well and then I lose the transparency....on and on and on...Also, the edges become VERY ugly.
I'll see what I can do about some of the issues tonight or tomorrow.
Please keep posting suggestions.
Quote from: Saurav on February 03, 2009, 03:09:09 AM
The snow shape is looking great now. The colours, specular highlights and details on the snow need to be modified/added for realism.
Please check the photo as an example of what I mean.
Regards,
Saurav
Thanks Saurav, that's an excellent reference picture!
Do you have any specific suggestions on how to do this?
I can send you the tgd if you'd like to see all the details.
Martin
the "ice-cream" look I was talking about is not from the shape or displacement but from the colour and lack of reflectivity/transluency ^^
Martin I would like to have a look at the TGD. I'll see if I can help you out with the specular highlights as well, I remember a while ago trying to create something similar to your snow surface. :)
Thanks!
It will be on its way tonight (about 11 hours from now) :)
This is fantastic!
How about this? :)
TU, I'm sure that you just took a picture of some snow :)
I really like the shape and details in the snow, especially around the tufts of grass. The way the snow bends around them is really fantastic. A few of the bigger dirt clumps bug me a little bit but that could most likely be solved easily. I'm not sure whether it is your lighting, or my monitor, but the snow is just slightly too yellow to my eye. Perhaps a postwork white balance adjustment would fix that. Great work all around!
This is looking great now, you can see what looks like specular highlights.
Quote from: darthvader on February 05, 2009, 02:02:06 AM
TU, I'm sure that you just took a picture of some snow :)
Thanks Jeff ;D
Quote from: RArcher on February 05, 2009, 02:06:53 AM
I really like the shape and details in the snow, especially around the tufts of grass. The way the snow bends around them is really fantastic. A few of the bigger dirt clumps bug me a little bit but that could most likely be solved easily. I'm not sure whether it is your lighting, or my monitor, but the snow is just slightly too yellow to my eye. Perhaps a postwork white balance adjustment would fix that. Great work all around!
Thanks Ryan, I know where the yellow comes from and let me explain:
First of all: the speculars are created using a small clip Moodflow created. I barely had to adjust it so it is very good :) Thanks a lot!
The speculars are being lit by a seperate sun which is placed at the zenith and has a strength of 0.2 (or 0.1, can't remember exactly).
This sun only casts specular light and no shadows or what so ever. I gave it a slight yellow tint and that's probably what you see.
I'll make it white again and try to see a difference. Since I'm a tad color-blind I can have difficulties seeing slight colordifferences, though I can see contrasts very well :)
Could you please post my image and point me the spots which you don't like? I think I'm very close to a "perfect" setup (if that exists anyway) so I really would like to sort out everything on this one.
I also would like to add that the grasses etc. are just to illustrate for myself how this snow looks in a "natural environment" instead of a dull test-scene.
Martin
Quote from: Saurav on February 05, 2009, 03:39:57 AM
This is looking great now, you can see what looks like specular highlights.
Thanks Saurav. In crop-tests this looked even better, more crisp and brighter.
So somehow at full res it looks different, probably some GI issue.
Quote from: RArcher on February 05, 2009, 02:06:53 AM
I'm not sure whether it is your lighting, or my monitor, but the snow is just slightly too yellow to my eye.
That yellow colour gives life to the image, because snow is never pure in the forest.
I'm sure it was just a deer that had to let go of some fluids...
Thanks! Ghehe, you've a lifely imagination :) lol
My God, TU. This is a lot better.
marvelous !
you did great improvements Martin !
TU the edges of the snow patch are looking so much better and the highlights almost sparkle. The yellow tinge can be easily disregarded as a matter of individual site influences. Most of the people who look at this progress would probably like to see a clip file or screen capture of the final work node structure, at least I know I would.
I'm interested in either a file or an image of the nodes and / or some explanations. This is very, very useful. Its uses could go beyond snow - oil spills, blood flow, water flow, gunk droppings...and other more imaginative uses.
Thanks for the positive feedback guys!
I'm rendering a new version of this and it should look even better :)
I'll be making this snowsurface available soon, once I've figured everything out and wrote a proper description of how this works.
Martin
Here is the render I promised :)
As you can see it is loaded with shadow-errors...will have to check what causes this.
That is freaking awesome snow.
Great work, T-U :).
I don´t know if its that what you mean by shadow-errors, but to me it looks as if your plants where floating above the surface and throwing correct shadows.
otherwise very snowy.
Best regards,
Jan
Quote from: Mahnmut on February 09, 2009, 01:17:47 PM
I don´t know if its that what you mean by shadow-errors, but to me it looks as if your plants where floating above the surface and throwing correct shadows.
otherwise very snowy.
Best regards,
Jan
Yes Jan, you're correct about that. I'll still have to look into this issue, see if it is because of the intersect underlying or due to incorrect setup.
Very impressive work! I think there is some combination of different versions that would be "ideal", a little something is perhaps lost in the shape in this latest version, but overall it is a notable improvement and is near "perfect" for what it is. Now you just need to find a scene in which to make it the star. Maybe a big patch of remaining snow in front of the camera, at the foot of the volcanic cone in St. Helens, looking up at the rest of the crater, a wide-ish angle shot. ;D
- Oshyan
a dead snowman...excellent!
Quote from: inkydigit on February 25, 2009, 12:55:18 PM
a dead snowman...excellent!
Ghehe...crazy fools :P ;D
Quote from: Oshyan on February 13, 2009, 12:29:26 AM
Very impressive work! I think there is some combination of different versions that would be "ideal", a little something is perhaps lost in the shape in this latest version, but overall it is a notable improvement and is near "perfect" for what it is. Now you just need to find a scene in which to make it the star. Maybe a big patch of remaining snow in front of the camera, at the foot of the volcanic cone in St. Helens, looking up at the rest of the crater, a wide-ish angle shot. ;D
- Oshyan
Thanks Oshyan :) I certainly will try to make it the star in a real scene, but unfortunately I'm very busy with other TG-projects now which I really want to finish first and soon. Let's say it will be beneficial for everyone ;)
I like your suggestion of Mt. St. Helens :)
Martin
Hello Martin, last saturday I was travelling in the french Alps, and I saw that landscape that make me think about your current work.
Bye
Pascal.
Hi Pascal,
That looks pretty similar in some regards, to be honest.
Thanks for sharing this and great you liked it too! :)
Martin
I've made this snow available through NWDA :)
Please checkout the link below for more:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=6255.0 (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=6255.0)
Martin