DA Let it Snow

sriesch

I'm curious to see what people think of "DA Let it Snow" ( http://www.daz3d.com/da-let-it-snow ), and how people are using it.  Looks like an interesting tool.

WendyLuvsCatz

I would like to see an animation using it out of curiousity

I myself am unlikely to use it as I primarily do not use DS and can do such things with particles elsewhere but am interested to see how well it works in DS where one cannot.

kyoto kid

..it looks like a combination of the old Blowin in the Wind tool and Snow Shader, but with a lot more options and useable in Itay. 

Off to find a Recent Release PC item to buy...

Serene Night

It doesn't need to be a release from today. I bought Genesis 3 male for gen 2 and it triggered. I'll test it out and let you know

JeremyD

Welp, thanks for the heads up on this one. Instantly wish listed. 

I do recall a recent thread on how a Iray snow shader was much needed. Can't wait to see what people do.

kyoto kid

...picked up Lucid Dream  to get it.  Perfect dress for my little Leela.

3Ddreamer

I picked up DA Let it Snow and played with it yesterday and like Kyoto says it is a combination Let it Snow and Blowing in the Wind but using Geoshell - took me a while to figure out how to change the density of snow (need to do it to the geoshell not the model - duh) but after that I was happily covering everything with iray snow. I had to do a couple of my Christmas cards with Let it Snow in 3DL because this didn't exist. Next year I am set :-) Can't show you any examples as i am back a work today.

barbult

Cris Palomino said:

Barbult, have you put in a ticket on Lucid Dream?

Yes, Request #207848, five days ago.

nDelphi

Serene Night said:

It doesn't need to be a release from today. I bought Genesis 3 male for gen 2 and it triggered. I'll test it out and let you know

Next time I'll experiment with that. I would have picked up something in my wishlist.

erik leeman

Just did a (not so) quick test with Octane for DAZ Studio v2.2.223.4850, and it works!

Applying the textures to the shells is a bit of a chore, but it does look good so it's worth the effort I think.

I'll post a render.

Cheers!

erik leeman

Predatron's Trash Stash covered with a thin layer of snow.

I'm sure there's a lot that can be improved, all textures were imported straight from Studio without adjustments.

I've chosen the 3Delight texture preset for the snow, but as usual the transparency maps had to be selected manually for all snow-covered surfaces (the geometry shells) in the Octane Materials tab.

Cheers!

 

evilded777

Thanks for posting that Erik.  Pretty impressive.  This is sitting in my cart, but I was being cautious.  Now, not so much.

JeremyD

That looks good Erik! I like that the snow texture has those little holes revealing the below surface. It makes it convincing for me.

Now I'm thinking, how hard would it be to convert the snow to sand? So we would have a sand shader as well....

erik leeman

JeremyD said:

Now I'm thinking, how hard would it be to convert the snow to sand? So we would have a sand shader as well....

That's exactly what I was thinking of!

Or green alien slimy mud, or severe (tropical) rainwater, or ... you name it : )

erik leeman

Translucent green snot to replace the original snow doesn't make the render time any shorter, as I've just found out ; )

Mattymanx

JeremyD said:

That looks good Erik! I like that the snow texture has those little holes revealing the below surface. It makes it convincing for me.

Now I'm thinking, how hard would it be to convert the snow to sand? So we would have a sand shader as well....

 

The only problem is that snow and sand dont pile up the same as snow is ice crystals and sand is tiny rocks.

erik leeman

Mattymanx said:

The only problem is that snow and sand dont pile up the same as snow is ice crystals and sand is tiny rocks.

Technically you're right I'm sure, but would the difference really be noticeable from a distance?

Here's a quick and positively dirty Octane for DAZ Studio render with green translucent slime in stead of snow.

Again, lots of things can be done better, but it already gives an impression of the things you could use this for.

Cheers!

sriesch

erik leeman said:

JeremyD said:

Now I'm thinking, how hard would it be to convert the snow to sand? So we would have a sand shader as well....

That's exactly what I was thinking of!

Or green alien slimy mud, or severe (tropical) rainwater, or ... you name it : )

Good ideas there!

kaotkbliss

Originally I had skipped over this item...

 

...it is now in my wishlist

Design Anvil - Razor42

Thanks for your interest in DA Let it Snow! I have been really excited about this one and honestly it was a challenge to render promos and write a description that fully shows it's capabilities. As something like the mountain snow cap shell or the snow flake particle simulator you really need to get your hands on to see how well they work. 

Cool render there Erik thanks for posting it!

If you guys come across any issues or have any questions feel free to ask, I will keep an eye on the thread and try to answer them the best I can.

One of the main things I was aiming to achieve was having the snow be able to sit on top of objects and not just be shrink wrapped to the object as a shader layer would. The Geo shell provides a good solution allowing some flexibility for thing like snow depth and it should also render well across most render engines. The Snow Geo shell also allows snow to sit where you would expect it on an object for example heavy snow on the roof but the walls free of snow. You can also stack and layer for example: 1 shell for heavy snow on the roof and a 2nd more tightly fitting to the building adding frost to the vertical walls for a more complete look. Or you can even apply different mat/shader preset to different surfaces for say a rock sitting in heavy snow that you don't want to completely cover. Freeing the effect from being bound to displacement and it's scaling issues is also an added bonus of using this method.

Re: Different materials - I have been looking at a few different material types that the Geo shell implementation may work well with and should have an expansion for this at some point. It does works particular well with snow because of the way snow sits on top of objects and has thickness. Liquids or granular objects would need a different approach because of the way they flow off objects, but I'm experimenting with a few ideas.   

Re: Snow Thickness - You can change the depth of the snow either with the included DA Snow Shell Adjuster Presets or manually adjusting with the parameters on the Snow Geo shell itself.  Combining multiple shells on one object is also possible too.

Here are a few renders I have done recently with some snow added in. It would be great to see what you guys can do with it:)

Knittingmommy

I bought this and it looks great.  I haven't had a chance to play with it yet.  I just wish products came out before I finish entries in contests when I could have used them instead of after I finish the entry and post them.  I could have really used something like this for my winter entry in the new user's contest.  Same thing happened the month Marshian's Above the Fog came out.  I could have really used that, but it came out after the fact.  While I'm glad I'm learning new skills, you PAs have got to work on those mind reading skills and get these products out in a more timely fashion. 

Now for a serious question, if I used this, would there be a way to add footprints in the snow on a given geometry shell or not?  If yes, how would I do that?  I was wondering if I could set up some type of displacement map with footprints added to the snow, but I don't know if that would work (might mess up displacement maps for the snow shader) or if there would be an easier way to do something like that?  I'd like to be able to do it without any postwork, if possible.  I honestly don't know that much about geometry shells yet.  I'm learning, but I have a long way to go.

Design Anvil - Razor42

@Knittingmommy

For 3Delight displacement maps for footprints should work okay with the right lighting. With Iray they may be okay but you would need to be careful as displacement in Iray works off the actual geometry of the mesh and you may need to do a lot of subdivision to make it noticable depending on what your applying it to, in general normal maps work best for Iray. The shaders don't actually use any displacement maps so there would be no conflict in that regard. There are a number of ways to accomplish the effect it just depends what tools you have and what renderer your using.  

 

barbult

Why does "DA Frost 02 - Glass Iray.duf" load the Daz Studio Default shader instead of Iray Uber shader?

Design Anvil - Razor42

barbult said:

Why does "DA Frost 02 - Glass Iray.duf" load the Daz Studio Default shader instead of Iray Uber shader?

The automatic Iray conversion will convert it to Iray Uber shader when rendering, this shader was adjusted to render well in Iray from the Daz Studio default base, so it didn't really need to be converted as a base shader type. If you compare it to the same 3Delight shader there are some differences in the settings which optimise it for each engine. To tidy up I would normally convert it and save it as Iray Uber just for neatness, this would be definitely required if some specific Iray shader settings needed to be added on the shader settings. It won't impact on how it renders in Iray, as the conversion is automatic.

barbult

Design Anvil - Razor42 said:

barbult said:

Why does "DA Frost 02 - Glass Iray.duf" load the Daz Studio Default shader instead of Iray Uber shader?

The automatic Iray conversion will convert it to Iray Uber shader when rendering, this shader was adjusted to render well in Iray from the Daz Studio default base, so it didn't really need to be converted as a base shader type. If you compare it to the same 3Delight shader there are some differences in the settings which optimise it for each engine. To tidy up I would normally convert it and save it as Iray Uber just for neatness, this would be definitely required if some specific Iray shader settings needed to be added on the shader settings. It won't impact on how it renders in Iray, as the conversion is automatic.

Thanks for the quick reply!

Knittingmommy

Design Anvil - Razor42 said:

@Knittingmommy

For 3Delight displacement maps for footprints should work okay with the right lighting. With Iray they may be okay but you would need to be careful as displacement in Iray works off the actual geometry of the mesh and you may need to do a lot of subdivision to make it noticable depending on what your applying it to, in general normal maps work best for Iray. The shaders don't actually use any displacement maps so there would be no conflict in that regard. There are a number of ways to accomplish the effect it just depends what tools you have and what renderer your using.  

 

Thanks.  I'll play around with it and see what I can come up with.

Fishtales

I used Let it Snow on this.

After

Click on image for full size.

coqueyo

JeremyD said:

That looks good Erik! I like that the snow texture has those little holes revealing the below surface. It makes it convincing for me.

Now I'm thinking, how hard would it be to convert the snow to sand? So we would have a sand shader as well....

I think it can:

 

barbult

coqueyo said:

JeremyD said:

That looks good Erik! I like that the snow texture has those little holes revealing the below surface. It makes it convincing for me.

Now I'm thinking, how hard would it be to convert the snow to sand? So we would have a sand shader as well....

I think it can:

 

What I do like: The convincing mud/sand color and texture of your "snow".

What I don't like: The grid lines in the ground texture showing a repetitive texture tiling. Was that noticeable before applying the snow, or is that a result of the snow shader?

IceDragonArt

Picked this up today excited to try it.  As knittingmommy said, I could have used this in the winter newbie contest that ended today lolol!   This looks like it will have a lot of useful applications and will definitely expand all of my landscape options by at least two or three times

coqueyo

barbult said:

coqueyo said:

JeremyD said:

That looks good Erik! I like that the snow texture has those little holes revealing the below surface. It makes it convincing for me.

Now I'm thinking, how hard would it be to convert the snow to sand? So we would have a sand shader as well....

I think it can:

 

What I do like: The convincing mud/sand color and texture of your "snow".

What I don't like: The grid lines in the ground texture showing a repetitive texture tiling. Was that noticeable before applying the snow, or is that a result of the snow shader?

I forgot to clarify that the test was done using 3Delight render.
DA Let it Snow by default don't use an image on the diffuse color channel, I put one there (which by the way is not perfectly tiled, hence the visible seams). In any case it was my fault. By no means a failure of the shader.
It was a quick test. (I was in a hurry for the New Year's party)