Snow, blend file

Have been thinking about making makro snow shot for some time. GPU, Render time 30 min.
*update. Render times do not longer apply. (Just cranked up the samples and leaved render for night ;), 1080p still could render in 30-40min though)






As i’ll have a birthday in few days (7th January), here’s lil’ present for you guys.

7 Likes

This is so absolutely awesome!!! CG beats real-life macro photography :wink: Did you create the snow by modeling a small portion and then using the particle system? And is the light coming from a Blackbody emitter?

amazing! -

Added some closeups in main post. Here’s wireframe


I used Hair particles from simple hand placed geometry (monkeys), which then got hided (masked). I use HDRI for lighting. You know, most proven method. :eyebrowlift:

Great job! I think what really sells it is the drops of water clinging to the twig underneath. The lighting is really nice also.

wow! the snow look really realistic! Especially the first close-up it is hard to tell if it is real or not:)

This is so cool! Amazing job!

Realistic to me

Wow!! Thats fantastic!

After the moss comes the snow! Amazing work once more., absolutely perfect. You.ll have to make a real tutorial one day:D

The depth of field is really cool and the snow itself is amazing. Nicely done.

wow, very nice result.

This is probably the most realistic snow render I have ever seen (and I’ve seen a lot)

Really awesome work man, I was certain that this was a reference photo until I saw the viewport screengrab.

Guys, thanks to everyone for warm comments. I’m really glad you liked it!

So, here is little in depth breakdown.

  • First stage is of course is modeling a twig. Fine details were added with displace modifier. It was really handy, coz, it was late night and i was really lazy sculpting all that details.

  • Then i modelled a ice pieces and water drops. I just masked some regions on duplicate of the branch, extruded and smoothed them. Quick randomizing with sculpt grab brush

  • Placed monkeys on branch just in the shape i wanted the snow to be. I had no problems with intersections, In fact i used them in some places to make snow more dense. So its just randomly placed suzanne models.

  • Added subsurf and then big distortions with displace modifier to monkeys. Here i used really big and random distortions.

  • Added hair particles to monkeys. Had some time playing with settings. So, in short, i wanted really random directions for hairs. And hair strand width is main controller of scale of snow. But, more hair width is, less light is passing into the snow, so the darker the snow. So with increasing hair width i also had to play with shaders to fix the snow darkness.

  • Added mask modifier to monkeys to hide main geometry and leave hair system intact.

  • Lighted the scene with HDRI (sunset). In fact it was the first stage, because, before doing everything i described above i did same with small test geometry and found right lighting and hair settings first, and then i did it on the bigger, final scene.

P.S. placing monkeys on the branch was funniest part.



1 Like

Incredible! Wow, the best looking snow I’ve ever seen. Thank you for sharing how to recreate this.

Wow… never seen suzanne so strangely used!! :slight_smile:

Absolutely awesome!!! Better get that printed big on canvas!

Good idea. By the way, You know, your “sanctuary” was one of my main inspiration for my mossy rock

Glad to have inspired something! :slight_smile:

Thx for sharing the process. The result is stunning!