Testing a Snow Macro in World Machine

QuantumTheory

Rendered straight from WM. Testing a new snow node. The snow node that's included with world machine is a bit slow and I can't grab the deposition of the snow to use as a mask for coloring or whatever.

Basically I take the flow heightfield from an erosion node, expand it, blur it, crank up the contrast, and then a slope selector mask is subtracted from it. Then I use that result as a blend mask between the eroded terrain and a gently blurred version of it. The blurred version is slightly higher then the unblurred. Simple snow. I still need to optimize this one further as I'd like to get rid of the expander. It's pretty cool just hitting the randomize function and seeing it lay naturally.

Meloncov

The scale feels off to me. Either those are really tiny mountains or it's like sixty feet of snow.

ThinkKlinck

This is pretty awesome, I do see what Meloncov is saying, but the mountains look awesome. I think I'm gonna have to try this for my own environment

Thaiauxn

That is pretty fantastic. I've had trouble getting a clean mask after a blur node is applied in the past to achieve a similar effect. Where in the macro do you think you could extract the masks for the snow layer? There may be a good one hidden before the blur inside that erosion macro, if you open it up. Apply feather to the edges in photoshop afterwords maybe.

It could be a good way to generate "Canopy" for a lush jungle using a method like this: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=130038 - but clean masks would be needed to hack & slash between mudbox, 3dsmax, and photoshop.

I'd be interested in seeing your results!