[solved] Realistic snow in Corona

[tomislavn]

Hey guys, I am currently working on a project that includes lots of snow and I am kinda stuck in making it look realistic - precisely, I'm stuck with creating believable sparkles. Is there anyone who did it before so he could help me a bit with that? Thank you in advance :)

P.S. Here is some quick references about the looks I am trying to achieve.

[maru]

Here is my super quick attempt as you asked mostly for the spark effect. Basically I rendered a normal map of tiny rectangles scatter on a plane, then used this map as bump for the snow material. If you look at reference photos, you can see that the snow has tiny flat surfaces in it, and they reflect sun at different angles. The trick is to recreate this. So here it is. It would of course require more material tweaking and would look much better with proper SSS/translucency/refraction.

I am attaching render + max2014 scene.

[tomislavn]

Wow! That was quick Maru :)) Thank you very much, it is looking great even with that basic setup! I have downloaded the scene and I am gonna check it out.

[selant]

oh my god what a result. looks perfect

[Ludvik Koutny]

Rendering snow is very problematic because:

Snow in reasonable distance (>2m) can be easily faked with overall bump and SSS. Snow from up close won't be looking good unless you physically model individual snowflakes - at least approximately.

Now, there are solutions to render good looking snow up close, and good looking snow in distance, but good looking snow from up close takes tremendous amount of rendertime and RAM. So when you need to see snow closeup and distant snow in one shots, it can get little problematic, especially in animation where you zoom in to the ground and close up on the snow surface.

If you are doing stills, it could be manageable though.

Here's the result I've got:


And I am also attaching scene, but it's Max 2016 and you will also need latest daily because of vector displacement.

[fire3d]

maru & rawalanche, booth are nice results - thx for sharing this with us :)

[tomislavn]

Oh my freakin' God Rawa :D that is completely insane! Thank you very much also - will definitely check it out! <3

EDIT: I was breaking my head over why doesn't the scene look exactly like yours (missing small micro displacement)... then I went over and re-read the post and installed the latest daily build :) Working amazingly good right now!!! Love you man! :)

[Ludvik Koutny]

You can also increase detail by reducing displacement px size to 1 and increasing tiling of the displacement map to 150 or 200%. But I am not sure if it would hold up in large resolutions if you don't have much memory :)

[tomislavn]

You can also increase detail by reducing displacement px size to 1 and increasing tiling of the displacement map to 150 or 200%. But I am not sure if it would hold up in large resolutions if you don't have much memory :)

Thank you for the tips :) Yeah, I have tried it but the RAM usage is insane. Since this is some personal project, which I am doing on my home PC, the RAM usage goes up to 16GB in a matter of minutes. Will have to render it on REBUS in the end I guess, but for previews without vector disp. it will be just fine =)

EDIT: Added some quick fiddle from testing environment :) raw render, no post

[arrival]

brrr....cool  :-)

[zchen]

You can also increase detail by reducing displacement px size to 1 and increasing tiling of the displacement map to 150 or 200%. But I am not sure if it would hold up in large resolutions if you don't have much memory :)

Thank you for the tips :) Yeah, I have tried it but the RAM usage is insane. Since this is some personal project, which I am doing on my home PC, the RAM usage goes up to 16GB in a matter of minutes. Will have to render it on REBUS in the end I guess, but for previews without vector disp. it will be just fine =)

EDIT: Added some quick fiddle from testing environment :) raw render, no post

Hey tomislavn,

Nice results already, without vect. displ.
So did you simply plug the snow noise texture into the material bump slot?

Also, could you save Rawa's awesome test scene in Max2015 please? I have not upgraded yet as I'm right in the middle of a project that needs some nice fresh snow :)

Thank you.

[marioteodoru]

This snow is insane!
Can i ask how did u make the vector displacement? Is it zbrush noise? Did u sculpt it in zbrush and than exported or is procedural noise ? I'm quite noobie, so please explain if you wish. Thank  you.

[selant]

once i tried vector displacement maps from zbrush to 3dsmax/corona but i never succeeded. Any helps in relation with the snow and vector displacement thing ? Thank you

[micmac]

Rendering snow is very problematic because:

And I am also attaching scene, but it's Max 2016 and you will also need latest daily because of vector displacement.

Hello user, can someone convert the 2016 Max scene to 2014?
Thanks a lot!

[maru]

Here: