How do I create realistic snow ontop of a CG object?
Hello there!
I'm right in the middle of a project at school and I need somew urgent help.. I'm supposed to layer snow on top of my CG object. This is supposed to be CG elements matched into a real life plate, so no game asset approaches (unless they look good ofcourse).
My CG object (thors hammer) is supposed to be jammed into the ground in the middle of the winter. And so I need a way to realisticly place snow onto the hammer aswell. I haven't really thought of how they create snow for film production. One wat that comes to mind is ofcourse Houdini, but i'm not too experienced with it.
We are using Maya and rendering with Redshift. I can create a hacky solution inside substance painter, but I don't feel like it gets me the results I'm looking for.
Should I place geometry on top of the hammer and then create a snow shader with Redshift? Simulate snow with houdini? Or are there some other common and easy go to tricks when it comes to snow.
Any tips or tricks would be highly appreciated!
(We are provided with most of the mainstream software for 3D and texturing, so I can adapt)
(We are provided with most of the mainstream software for 3D and texturing, so I can adapt)
Thank in advance! :-)
Replies
PolySnow: https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/scripts-plugins/modelling/polysnow-for-3dsmax?fbclid=IwAR3oba7iv-rvcv8w3p0KfglaA8kmlk7td-GwppIFLYO2pNyWwWRYwAtc_fY
The cool thing about it is that it creates geometry that you can shape and sculpt using max's tools or export it to something like zBrush. Which I had to do because I foot prints and disturbed snow that I needed to add and at the time they didn't have a way to deform the snow, now in v4 they do.
I had a fairly large scene and had to run it in passes (ground, trees, roof tops, rocks bla bla bla) but it saved me a ton of time. It beat trying to simulate particles and convert them to blobmeshes or custom deform meshes to fit each clump of snow...
For $40 it was worth it for me. The time it saved me was 15-20hrs of tedious manual labor that would have cost a lot more than $40. You might want to try reaching out to them and see if they have a school license or a cheaper independent lic, if the cost is a barrier to you.
Using Maya, I don't think there is a plug-in that makes it as easy as PolySnow, but there are several workflows that can get you what you want. Most involve dropping nParticles onto a surface and have it create geometry.
Maya nParticle snow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atdKrYlJDYY
This method takes a bit of time and iteration to get right, but once you have a workflow you can pretty much drop snow on anything you need. You can also use selected faces to spawn particles which might be slightly faster than trying to drop particles.
Houdini is great for this sort of thing, but if you're not familiar with Houdini it might take longer to ramp up on the basics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtMZHfXS1s4
You can also go vanilla and use nparticles: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/X0950
I ended up going with a snow generator tutorial for houdini that I found on YouTube. It gave me a good base, but it didn't really take it all the way. I then took the mesh from houdini into zbrush to make some minor changes and make the snow fall a bit more how I wanted it. Then I created a pretty nice snow shader with redshift. It looked really nice up close and especially back-lit as you could see tons of individual spec highlights shimmering.
Thanks for the replies though. Snow is such a common thing so I'll make sure to check out the other methods u guys mentioned for my future projects!