low level rolling mist and snow crystals on trees

[coremelt]

Could you create this scenes in Terragen?
http://www.artbeats.com/clips/FNN-FH104-81/HD
http://www.artbeats.com/clips/FNN-FH104-92/NTSC

Specifically the low level rolling mist and the ice crystals on trees.  First of all anyone got presets that might help to get close?

Second of all if you are a TG freelancer and think you could create comparable scenes then please contact me privately.  I am a Freelance VFX Supervisor and Flame artist and I want to have a roster of TG artists I can call on for remote work on future projects.

[TheBadger]

Both can be done rather easily in terms of landscape and mist. The flowing river looks rather difficult. But there has been a lot of interest in moving water and rivers, waterfalls. I know that people are working on various methods for the flowing river now... So, yeah mostly it can be done. But renders times would be very high if it was all in TG2.

[coremelt]

how long render times are we talking?  I'd have the budget to render the final scenes on The Ranch or another cloud based render farm so that's not an insurmountable problem.

Lots of things are feasible when you chuck 176 dual Xeons at it

What about the ice crystals on the trees?  None of the XFrog plants have snow on them, you can modify the textures in Photoshop but I'm after a procedural solution.

[TheBadger]

I saw something like what your asking about (ice crystals) in the forum.  Ill see if I can find it.

[TheBadger]

Here is a discusion that may give you some ideas:
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=226.0

[Oshyan]

You would really want to do any major snow accumulation on trees in a modeling program, but in terms of sparkly snow shaders, you could probably add that in TG with a noisy, patchy specular mask. People have made various sparkly snow rigs that might be applicable.

- Oshyan

[TheBadger]

You would really want to do any major snow accumulation on trees in a modeling program, but in terms of sparkly snow shaders, you could probably add that in TG with a noisy, patchy specular mask. People have made various sparkly snow rigs that might be applicable.

- Oshyan

Ahh, yes, sparkles! There is a lot of discussion about that in the snow sticky thread

[coremelt]

You would really want to do any major snow accumulation on trees in a modeling program, but in terms of sparkly snow shaders, you could probably add that in TG with a noisy, patchy specular mask. People have made various sparkly snow rigs that might be applicable.

- Oshyan

Is anyone selling any premade tree models with snow anywhere?  As mentioned there is no 'winter pack' for XFrog, I would have thought that would be a popular item if they had winter versions of trees available but alas.

[Oshyan]

That's a really good question. I've seen isolated models with snow on them, but never a good pack of them. Worth looking around. Where's MGebhart when you need him? Hehe.

- Oshyan

[inkydigit]

That's a really good question. I've seen isolated models with snow on them, but never a good pack of them. Worth looking around. Where's MGebhart when you need him? Hehe.

- Oshyan

Marc's 'generic snow pines' here?: http://web.me.com/marcgebhart1/Trees/Conifers.html
maybe work for populations/medium distance renders?

[Dune]

For distant snow it is indeed quite simple to add a surface layer or PF between default and parts shader with snowy colors and/or reflectivity, blended by a distribution shader for height and/or slope. By using the breakup or another PF as blender it can be made patchy. But it only colors the leaves and/or branches, of course.

[rcallicotte]

Oh, how nice, Dune.

[Hannes]

Cool! I always wondered how to texture an object depending on slope. But it only worked for me with the red marked settings in my image. I put the snow shader between the bark shader of the tree and the multishader (I made the leaves invisible).

[dandelO]

All of this could be done pretty easily. The only really tricky part(as with all 3D) would just be making it appear photographic and not rendered.
I've done everything here with TG that you're asking about, rolling shifting cloud/mist, snow on trees, sparkly shaders for snow. I cannot find the preview images of the firs I was editing but Ade(if you are reading this), do you still have those example images of the snow on your firs I was working on? I can't seem to find them on my computer, think they must be deleted but if you have those emails you might post the shots here.