Josef - Sketchbook

Good day everyone!

First thing I will post here is something to help a bit inside this delightful community.

I found CgAlpha (http://www.blendswap.com/user/CgAlpha) when I was looking through some materials on Blendswap.
The snow shader I came up with is based on their Shader Ball mesh and using their HDRi for a sky. I hope they allow this.

I’ve yet to try this shader under different HDRi’s but I’m hoping it will stick, since it does not have any scene specific setup.

Here, render of Shader Ball:
Something to note; the white base under the ball is also the same material, however, it doesn’t appear to be, the only reason is that the mesh does not have any displacement on it.
http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g220/celestialvigor/Render_3_zpscrwodn8v.jpg

This is a screen of the mesh, notice the displacement.
http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g220/celestialvigor/Capture%20Shader%20Ball_zpsughwfzyr.jpg

I’ve also rendered another file for a look at a bit larger scale for the snow:
The common factor in the displacement between this terrain the the Shader Ball is the fine (grainy) displacement.
A uniform terrain was important to keep the displacement relatively undistorted.

http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g220/celestialvigor/Snow%20Terrain%20-%20render3_zpsplal05bz.jpg

The shader is very simple:
http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g220/celestialvigor/Capture%20Snow%20Nodet%20Setup_zps8m6htavc.jpg

The detail is all in the mesh, which should help with control.

Notes:
Now, the things I have not tried is to use a different environment image, or attempt larger scale snow.
Blender’s UI performance was an obstacle in this case, so instead of displacing the mesh with a modifier, maybe I will try the new micro-displacement feature in the future.

The other very important idea used here is the color-space/light-range from this awesome person
https://sobotka.github.io/filmic-blender/
after taking a look at Andrew Price’s video on this subject on Youtube: the Secret Ingredient to Photorealism

I’m using this technique because snow materials would get over-exposed under many lighting conditions in Blender.
In Andrew Price’s video (which I very much encourage to view), you can see how he measures exposure levels of color using Sobotka’s method.

Here are links to the Shader Ball and the terrain files:
Snow Shader
Snow Terrain
Remember, I don’t know how this will render with the default color-space.

Hope this helps.

Attachments

image

Another test of the snow material. Minding the scale of the displacement, but this time with a bump type displacement, which saved a lot of memory.

https://c1.staticflickr.com/4/3715/32910436844_e55e7bc04b_b.jpg

https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2837/33753365505_b82729489b_b.jpg

The snow is looking really good. Well done!

ooh thank you!

Keep it up! :smiley:

Used a similar shader of the one I created before. This is from a game that I have been playing for a long time (Planetside)

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4236/34945653064_a0dc7d85a1_c.jpg

This one looks very good as well. What was the inspiration? Keep it up! :smiley:

Thank you very very much!
It is inspired by the game Planetside 2, which I have been playing for the last two years.

To experiment with light a bit.

Trying architecture composition

For a draft I’m gonna call this done. Probably try a few others before details.