A variation on my current theme.
C&C welcome.
you should limit the minimum altitude of the snow so it doesn't appear under the water
agree with Seth, my only crit though!
Or change the coloring below the water to look like ice (and just a bit above the water surface)
Yep, you're right - forgot about that! I gave it the same settings as my recent iceberg pic, and it's not the same for snow!
Anyway here's a new version that I've been playing with. Not really worked but I've put it up here to be shot down.
The idea was to try and give the effect of ice forming or breaking up on the surface or just underneath the water.
Needs a lot more work yet though. C&C welcome.
That is a rather interesting render, with some quite convincing effects. One thing I noticed is in the far left corner on the water, there seems to be triangles just visible.
The shift from green to an overall blue hue really helps this. From the thumbnail it looked like a photo, and the larger isn't too far off. Not sure about the ice in the water. Maybe use the PF that generates the white splodges to mask between two water shaders, one having a lower decay distance with a blue tint and lighter volume colour. Maybe even add some displacement with a colour adjusted perlin ridges or two to simulate small cracks. I'm rendering from AFX at the moment. Will have a play once it's done.
Quote from: Hetzen on January 17, 2010, 03:17:05 PM
....... Maybe use the PF that generates the white splodges to mask between two water shaders,
haha you've discovered my method! _ two water shaders, no PF used. Water shaders at slightly different heights were merged and tweaked to give this effect. It needs more work though. I did have a really nice wet looking icelayer with a blue/green tinge with one set of values, but hard to replicate and make look convincing. Back to the drawing board!
Quote from: domdib on January 17, 2010, 02:59:59 PM
That is a rather interesting render, with some quite convincing effects. One thing I noticed is in the far left corner on the water, there seems to be triangles just visible.
Could you highlight these for me please?
The shore and ice-flots are well done - I prefer the overall depth in this scene when compared to your previous one. I still have yet to learn about doing stuff like this *sob* :)
I like the way and the look you have achieved for the ice. It looks very promising. Nice work.
Hi Kevin. Have you tried just mixing your two water shaders through surface layers blended by the PF mask used to make the ice shapes on the same lake object? No need to have two water layers. You can also add a little displacement to the ice surface layer to make it rise a little out of the water. I've had a bit of a play here and know the theory works.
Hi Kevin,
I really like this work. The snow, water and ice look quite convincing!
Quote from: Hetzen on January 17, 2010, 07:57:13 PM
Hi Kevin. Have you tried just mixing your two water shaders through surface layers blended by the PF mask used to make the ice shapes on the same lake object? No need to have two water layers. You can also add a little displacement to the ice surface layer to make it rise a little out of the water. I've had a bit of a play here and know the theory works.
That would also be my first approach. However, one advantage of using 2 watershaders is that you can control reflectivity of the ice-patches more easily. In this image I find the ice a bit too much reflective.
The addition of displacement is something really worth trying, great tip from Jon!
Cheers,
Martin
Thanks guys.
@ Hetzen/TU I'm not 100% sure I know what you mean.
My problem is that I don't have a PF generating the ice patches. They're made by merging two water shaders with different wave/roughness values, one for the water and one for the ice. They're then merged and selected by height.
Is this something like what you're suggesting:
I didn't use a merge shader. I used the ice shape pf to blend one surface layer into another, one with 'invert blendshader' switched on, so that it masks the oposite of the other. A nice aspect of this, is that it can make a nice mix between slightly transparent ice or hard edged depending on the contrast used in the PF. I didn't use any of the wave settings, I turned this page all to zero in the node. The water shader ice, I played with the volume density and colour, as well as the decay distance. The below examples were some quick sketches and need a lot of refinement to get to look right, but I believe it quite possible to come up with something very convincing. Be carful on how much you displace the ice surface layer (plugged into the original shape PF), as this did add loads to the render time. Might be worth turning everything else off whilst you refine this technique.
Anyway, hope it's of some use. I might have to play with this some more, time willing.
Cheers
Jon
*** EDIT *** in the node picture layout below, the "Clear Water Surface Layer" should be plugged into the "Ice Surface layer" input. Sorry about that.
Quote from: Kevin F on January 18, 2010, 04:38:26 AM
Thanks guys.
@ Hetzen/TU I'm not 100% sure I know what you mean.
My problem is that I don't have a PF generating the ice patches. They're made by merging two water shaders with different wave/roughness values, one for the water and one for the ice. They're then merged and selected by height.
I know you didn't use a PF. I meant that with your way of doing this, by using 2 water shaders, you have the possibility to control the reflective properties of the ice patches separately from the water.
The water is nicely reflective and so is the ice, while I think it would really add to the realism that the ice is less reflective and also a bit rougher.
To get some roughness, feed the watershader for the ice through a surfacelayer (use the input port, not the layer child).
The surfacelayer has colour disabled. Then make a really small scale PF (say 0.005 lead in, 0.0025 feature and 0.001 small) with really small displacement, say around 0.003. Connect that PF to the displacement port of the surfacelayer.
Feed the ouput of the surfacelayer into the merge-shader, like it was before without the surfacelayer, that's it.
Martin
Hi Kevin,
Cool looking ice, particularly the 3rd test image, already looking better than my Ice Shelf stuff from WaterWorks as per discussion on Dune's surf thread.
Looking at your node screenshot, not exactly to my taste but I'm glad someone else is using the colour customisations :-).
Regards,
Jo
I agree with Jo about the 3rd image being the best. If there were some washed up onto the shore I think this would be awesome. As it is now, it's really great work.
Hi Jo, I think you're refering to Hetzen's images here.
Regards
Kevin
Thanks for the input Hetzen and TU. Both really helpfull.
Iv'e got a nice image cooking at the moment thanks to you guys,
Whoops for me also. :-\ :P
Here's the latest render using Hetzen's ice technique (thanks again). It stands up well at higher resolutions but takes an age to render.
I know the specular highlights are high but hey, I think it works.
AA 6 , detail .65, GI 2,2 with super sample on.
Not that high at all but still took over 25hrs for the lower 2/3's alone!
Must get an i7 system soon.
C&C welcome.
congrats, the ice looks pretty convincing.
I still think the snow shouldn't be that thick, and then just have some parts not covered with snow at all and stones sticking through (like on the right side).
Overall I think it's a pretty creative image!
Cheers,
Frank
very nice! Probably a tad sharp towards the horizon/background, but especially the water/ice looks great.
I am very impressed. Nice work!
Completely agree with Frank here.
This is really good work, like it very much!
Do you need the warpy/stretchy fractal on the water to get the ice effect? I think the ice volumetrics look really nice by themselves.
Also, do you plan on developing this further and sharing it?
Keep up the good work :)
Cheers,
Martin
Excellent work on the ice - I'd add my request for a clip file. The one thing I'm not so enthused about is the surface of the snow close-up - I think it should be smoother.
P.S. Sorry not to respond to your earlier question - but the area of water where it was (just) visible is now ice-covered anyway.
Wow - that ice looks superb!
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on January 20, 2010, 07:55:51 AM
Do you need the warpy/stretchy fractal on the water to get the ice effect? I think the ice volumetrics look really nice by themselves.
That's what I like most about the ice, opinions differ I guess ;)