Highlands

Henry Blewer · January 04, 2010, 03:39:13 PM

That's it. looks like the very cold snow we have outside the window.

Linda McCarthy · January 04, 2010, 04:35:13 PM

The icy snow looks remarkably realistic. Linda

dandelO · January 04, 2010, 04:48:12 PM

Wow, man! The first image is fantastic, that's my favourite.
The sparkle spread is great and the slightly glassy appearance on the rocks, too. Very nice.

Dune · January 05, 2010, 04:07:53 AM

Well, as a matter of fact, I like the first image, but because it's a bit weird, not realistic. If you blend the snowshader by the softened initial terrain fractal, it gets this way. It looks like very transparant snow, or kind of steaming snow. Perhaps interesting to experiment with.
The tiny displacements are more from cloud artifacts in the first one. What would be nice now, and I hope I have time to experiment with that, is to get a melting edge around the snow (perhaps with another intersection layer and a water shader.....)

Tangled-Universe · January 05, 2010, 06:37:47 AM

Sounds like a great idea Ulco! You would be my hero if you can get convincing results. I tried it too when I was making my snowshader, but gave up, pain in the ass. I know you're more resourceful with masking etc. than me, so I'm quite hopeful you can pull it off

Dune · January 05, 2010, 09:18:01 AM

Well, Martin, a render is now buzzing along. Exciting, especially being a hero if it succeeds

I made a next surface layer, with a favor depression (intersection didn't work properly), a little smoothing, fuzzy softness 0.5 or so, and a reflective shader as a child. Water shader (all 0) looked very nice (maybe nicer) as well, but took far more time, so I chose the reflective for the time being. Blended it by a distance shader to keep it close. Very simple, and it seems like some runoff of water now.
I tried to make a small lake with the displacements from the terrain, and lower it a bit, but that didn't work properly. Although I didn't put much time in it, as the other method seems fine.

Will be updated...

Tangled-Universe · January 05, 2010, 09:24:56 AM

Quote from: Dune on January 05, 2010, 09:18:01 AM
Well, Martin, a render is now buzzing along. Exciting, especially being a hero if it succeeds

I made a next surface layer, with a favor depression (intersection didn't work properly), a little smoothing, fuzzy softness 0.5 or so, and a reflective shader as a child. Water shader (all 0) looked very nice (maybe nicer) as well, but took far more time, so I chose the reflective for the time being. Blended it by a distance shader to keep it close. Very simple, and it seems like some runoff of water now.
I tried to make a small lake with the displacements from the terrain, and lower it a bit, but that didn't work properly. Although I didn't put much time in it, as the other method seems fine.

Will be updated...

Hmmm...favor depressions, that didn't came to me back then. I was always in the assumption that using multiple intersect underlying surface layers would give problems, and it did, but I always tried displacement intersections, not displacement intersection + favor depression. With an extra compute terrain it should always work now I think.
Anyhow, I'm looking forward to see the result

Martin

Dune · January 05, 2010, 12:37:13 PM

Here's what happens if you change perlin into ridges, and lift them again. Although snow does blow up in ridges, this is too much. But the wetness kind of succeeded, although I admit it's difficult to get it right. A painted shader mask would be a lot easier I guess.
On the other machine the next one is rendering, now with the extra water shader (depressions, no fuzzy zone and slight smoothing) before the snow, hence it only occurs on the rocky soil.

By the way, Martin, an extra compute terrain doesn't work as it changes the terrain, even with patch=1.

MacGyver · January 05, 2010, 03:10:01 PM

That's a fantastic improvement, already looks more exciting and lively

paleo · January 05, 2010, 06:09:31 PM

That's one of the best snow pics I have ever seen in digital art... the glitter of the ice crystals is remarkable. The ridges in the last picture are indeed too much for this specific scene, but I think they could look good in a landscape heavily covered by deep snow...

Linda McCarthy · January 05, 2010, 10:53:52 PM

Nice hard pack!

Dune · January 06, 2010, 03:27:18 AM

I added some melting water, but it took ages (well, 3 hours for the top part, before I shut it down, which is 2 hours more than with the little water). This was the water shader, perhaps a reflective shader would have been just as good. This was done using a layer before the snow layer, with favor depressions activated and a lot of tweaking. Still not satisfied, but I must work on something else now. There's still the painted shader to try...

inkydigit · January 06, 2010, 03:36:51 AM

I think that the last one looks very good, maybe a reflective shader would be quicker too?...still great work!

EoinArmstrong · January 06, 2010, 05:03:04 AM

Last one looks awesome - but I'm still tickled by the first one

Tangled-Universe · January 06, 2010, 07:13:55 AM

It looks good Ulco, good for sure. The melting water does not really work for me though. I got similar results, but I just find it not convincing, it looks more like slimy stones. It would be nice, though bitchy hard to achieve, to have multiple small puddles of melted snow around the main snow-layer.

Martin

Highlands

dandelO