Fake snow (kind of)

[Dune]

Try to set the smallest and lead-in to 0.01 and the largest to 20000. I did, and that works quite nicely. And the contrast of the cloud fractals to 0.3 or so. I have another one rendering now.

---Dune

[Falcon]

This is my last render for today, I think this is nicely coming together. I'll also attach the .tgd

I don't yet know what's causing the "white-out" to the lower right.

I'll try adding some of the snow pines that were just posted to the files section and render a nice snow forest tomorrow.

[Henry Blewer]

This is really amazing Falcon. Both of you have done some really cool work.

[domdib]

I'm glad that my little experiment has stimulated creativity on Dune's and Falcon's part! Interesting that one works better for far shots and the other for near.

[Henry Blewer]

This entire thread has been very creative. Great work guys!

[Kadri]

Thanks guys  

There can be other useful ways too maybe...

This is the very little changed same file but this time as stars . As you can see there are problems. But i am sure you can make this useful in some way.
I can not test it (i use the free TG2 ). But this can be a real 3D star field in move . Maybe with a little tweaking galaxies , nebula's  too ?  

Kadri.
   

[Henry Blewer]

Kadri, add a distance shader to the cloud/stars. This can keep them behind the other objects.

[Dune]

@Kadri: Good idea
@Falcon: The whiteout is probably a denser part of your low lying cloud. Another seed might get rid of it...

The problem with the close snow (IMO) is that the flakes are so sharp, it doesn't really look real. That's why I concentrate on further away 'downpours' of snow.

---Dune

[Dune]

At second glance, I might take that last sentence back; depending on the filter you use it may look good after all.

---Dune

[Falcon]

After stopping the 10th or so new render, what I can say is that this thing is highly sensitive to even minor changes in the parameters. Tune something up from 1.0 to 1.2 - boom, everything goes grey. Tune a density down from 0.1 to 0.05 and you don't get half as many snow flakes, you get almost none at all.

I have a promising image coming along nicely right now, but there are so many parameter changes I'd love to try, and no time to do it. Not enough CPU power, in fact.

This is a very interesting approach, though. I think I'll be trying a modification for rain (stretch in Y direction, more grey than white) next, as soon as this one is done...

[Falcon]

Ok, here it is. Fake snow with trees. I kind of like this shot. It's not yet perfect, but it is fairly convincing snowfall.

[Zylot]

The weather outside is frightening...

Giving this snow a shot.  Working on the fog, coloring, and lighting still.  Made with the free edition till I get Deep back, so for now, this is the best rez I can pull off.

[domdib]

Thanks for the TGD, Falcon. I did a bit of playing and I agree that the settings seem rather sensitive. The whiteout you mentioned in your last but one image seems to be an effect of the clouds bunching up in a narrow valley, because turning the camera away from the valley removes the problem. Unfortunately changing the seed, as Dune suggested, doesn't.

I came across another rather odd effect. I rendered the same scene twice, first at 800 x 640, then at 2400 x 1920. At the higher resolution, the "snow" becomes much smaller. See attached and in the next post.

[domdib]

The smaller snow.

[dandelO]

I've just given this a shot myself on a new .tgd and I must say it's very good, far better than the actual flake object attempt I made.

For variation, I'm using a secondary fractal as a blend shader(scales=10, 1000, 0.1) to the first 'flake' fractal(scales=0.1, 0.1, 0.01). The good thing about that is that by using the warp feature of the blending shader fractal, you can 'twist' the pattern of the fake flakes to give some variation(and use different noise patterns), using the warp of the flake fractal has little effect on the flake distribution due to the tiny scales used in it.

This is all pretty cool and I'm playing with it now...