Ice Age (ending)

[choronr]

Another generation of enthusiasm ...watching and waiting to see the evolution of evolution.

[Dune]

Testing another setup now (nad also thinking about mud and raindrops falling), too many ideas but no time....

[Matt]

It seems like the light is scattered in a 'very blue way' in the shadows. Maybe something to do with refraction on the ice? How can we make shadows blue locally... have to try that.

GI Surface Details is capable of simulating this, to some extent. The brighter a surface, the further the light bounces in the shadows (or you can think of it as absorbing less light). A pure white surface will appear to be completely unaffected by GISD because any ambient light that is blocked is replaced by ambient light scattered in by the blocking surfaces. This works separately on each colour component (red, green and blue), and this is where it gets interesting. If the blue component of your surface colour is 1 (or 255 in the colour picker), GISD will not darken the blue channel at all. If your red and green components are slightly darker than the blue, the blueness will be exaggerated in the shadows.

Matt

[Dune]

That's interesting, Matt. But you say, red and green are darker, so not less? Or do you mean less? All I can do is make the color 'bluer' this way.

I've just colored the crack displacement shader in the meantime, and that makes the cracks bluer allright. Still have to render it though.

[gregtee]

Ideally you probably need a subsurface shader that can be modulated with a power fractal. 

[inkydigit]

amazing as always Ulco!
what about these blue stripes?
http://goo.gl/jrguCB

J

[Dune]

Well, you can fake it a little. Haven't got much further than this, at the moment. There are some incredible icebergs, nice collection you found. Enough inspiration....

[gregtee]

That's the idea for sure.

[efflux]

Nice work on the ground surface and you had a concept for this which helps. tundratest-v5-2 is a really good render because it has a nice POV and composition.

[lat 64]

Ulco,

Congrtulations! I love this!

The blue in glaciers is not so much a function of shadows, but it is actually light penetrating the ice and reflecting back out to our eye. Blue light is not reflected back by the surface like the shorter wavelengths.  The glaciers are actually glowing from those deep cracks.
I was thinking of a level of transparency to simulate this. A modified water shader? A light source under the surface?

Here's a pretty one:
http://media.arcus.org/album/polartrec-2011-jim-pottinger/13486

Russ