Fake snow (kind of)

[dandelO]

With the scales mentioned above ^^, here's a couple of different flake variations. The settings are very extreme between the 2 images, a very much closer incremental setup would give very nice animated snow...

Fractal blend shader - Warp = 0.5:
[attachimg=#]

Fractal blend shader - Warp = 5:
[attachimg=#]

And a basic .tgd(blending warp value = 0.5... [attachimg=#]

* There is no snow surface layers, it seems so thick on the ground because the centre of the flake fractal(500m depth) is at nearly ground level, I think. Off-setting the cloud height upwards would thin it out at the ground I assume, although this might be the same thing mentioned in previous pages with the whiteout issues. I think, though, if you raise the clouds to a higher level this would be resolved.

[Falcon]

Probably. I won't be able to play with this anymore over the weekend.

Speaking of cloud height: Anyone know by heart if the cloud height is from the height parameter upwards only, or in both directions? Is the height parameter the center of the cloud layer, or the bottom?

[dandelO]

Yes, it's from the centre, outwards.

[Dune]

Very nice addition, Dandel0. Snowflakes indeed often hurl around in patches. Did you try high res large and small renders to see whether the flakes are different in size? I find Domdib's find quite intriguing.

---Dune

[dandelO]

I didn't try different res/sizes/etc, no. I actually only downloaded the free version for this computer last night, I'm not at home. I just had a quick play with this while my girfriend was in the bath. I'll play more when I get home...

[dandelO]

*** Raising the clouds does remove the apparent ground covering of snow. I've just tested it and I found that the lower extreme of the flake layer(minimum altitude in the cloud settings), should be at about ground level to reduce the whiteout effect that is happening from being so far inside the cloud layer.

A detail level of '1', I imagine, will give the actual correct scales of the 'flakes' when rendered, the larger flakes at lower detail levels are due to not enough subdivision being done on the small scaled flake fractal.

[Falcon]

raising the cloud layer solves the whiteout issue.

But detail 1 doesn't bring much difference. What I find kind of troubling is that no matter what I do, I don't get any closeup-snowflakes.

Here's a render with detail 1:

[Dune]

Perhaps an extra cloud with a larger cloud size? And restrict it to close-up by a distance shader...

---Dune

[ADE]

i used a cirrus layer to do this with quarter density just to leave enough light thru. I been playing around with this idea some time ago
http://www.terragen.org/index.php?topic=4791.msg38454;topicseen#new