3DSnow shaders

skarlath

hey people
just working on this snow and ice shader here.
let me know what you think

sarabando

it looks great but being a total newb could you explain it abit more please? show me your work process ect?

skarlath

Basicly uses angle fall off to add translucency towards blue that snow has, a normal bump texture map to add some bump and cellular displacement.
Uses world z to determain max angle for the snow in wich case the ice then shows underneath. ice has a bunch of bump maps assinged in reflect and refraction to get the scratchy ice look plus some self illum to thicken up the colour so its not compleatly see through

Stevie_D

Very neat! It looks great, infact.

It certainly does what it says on the tin - an icy cold teapot that certainly gives me the chills!

I wouldn't fiddle with the settings much at all if i were you. It hits the spot so closely.

IRML

it looks great but it's slightly off right now, like maybe the snow looks too matte, needs to have a bit of sparkle thrown in there, but the ice effect is great

also I think some colour in the key light and some brightness changes would help make it more convincing

really good work anyway

skarlath

yea its looking a bit flat, im trying to get the tiny displacement working, using a cellular nosie set to 0.1 size i think but it donst seem to show

Aardwolf

Is the actual blue color something intrinsic to the material, or is it just the ambient lighting?

Edit: I mean in real life

skarlath

well here i used a max refraction distance and self illume to make it thick blue but in real life i beleve its a mix of environment and just the colour of water

Melak

The Ice looks pretty great!
How does the ice material work, is there displacement involved?

Adding some sparkles to the snow should be relatively easy - just add some low-sampled reflections

skarlath

yea theirs a little bit of displacement in the ice, uses a couple of ice scratch bump maps in the reflection and refraction channels along with some falloff maps. problem with the snow speckle is im not sure how to add some low sampled reflections cos my reflection maps used up with a bunch of stuff

skarlath

hey all, i switched to vray and got these shaders let me know if their better or worse

(used the snow shaders in a pic i just uploaded called "Dead Scout" check it out)

Melak

The snow looks good, but I liked the ice better before - it's very see through right now.

IRML

depends on what scale your going for, the first one looked great for large scale ice, this looks more like smaller scale - like an icecube or something

Coolhand

the first one looked way better all round. with the new rendering the teapot is so transparent that its easy to see that its intersecting with the snow its meant to be half buried in.. also i suppose the snow looks more realistic in a way, but i liked how it looked more caked on in the last one, i also preferred the atmospheric lighting and tones of the previous render.

without seeing both sets of shaders under consistent lighting and angle, its hard to say which might be actually better as the conditions are different in each image.

skarlath

yea agreed i like the old ice my self but i cant seem to get the same effect as that in vray, i was using metal ray before and i used the max refraction distance to give it its deep blue along with some self illumination but im not sure how to do that in vray, ill make another render using the same lighting as the last one

Chris2005

Looks very nice to me.

I like the first one better, it has that freezing feel.