Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
With the eyes, you probably missed some eye visibility... you probably missed a surface. One approach might be to turn them all off and then turn stuff on until you get what you want.
The seam you are seeing between shoulder and torso is a normal problem. I don't know if DA has some magic to make that go away... personally, I plan on experimenting with Iray decals (which work a lot like geoshells), which ignore material zones. The gap between snow and skin is due to the geoshell's offset -- you can either use one of DA's thingies, or simply go into parameters and change 'offset' to a lower number -- I find .01 is fine for most stuff and is very tight.
The patchy snow in the backdrop of the first image is probably due to displacement -- if the underlying surface has displacement, you have to copy those details to the geoshell so it displaces the same way.
thanks for these good tips, but there is no displacement and adjusting the bump-map didn't work.
DA - Thanks for that "how to" - appreciate it - got a render going now will post results when its done (6 hours in and counting...)
@ Lonesome Cowboy,
For the terrain with the jagged snow you can try converting the terrain to SUB D as the chunkyness is taken directly from the target mesh. Also if you select the shell there are some snow adjuster dials which may help it interact better with the terrain.
You can turn the snow covered eyes off either by selecting your Snow geo shell and through parameters visibility setting and turning off the shell on the required shaders or through the surfaces pallette and with 0% oppacity.
With the truancy jacket you can hide the snow shell section in the same way you hid the target clothing or the eyes as described as above.
As far as which adjuster goes with which shader preset, they all will work together, but will likely will be applicable only in some circumstances and may look odd in others.
An Adjuster preset adjusts how the Geoshell interacts with the target object.
A Shader preset adjusts the way the surface settings represent the snow on that Geoshell.
Hope this helps a bit. :)
thank you very much for fast help :-)
first i solved the problem of the eyes. I found that the shell is a kind of a copy of the object that is "below". I found now the way to make the eyes invisible. Even so the way to make the head of the jacket in visible.
The shell at the rocky_flats worked when i deleted the old one, then i set the subd of the rocks to 3 (i don't really know what i did here. Subdivision is something i don't know enough about) and added a new shell.
Now it looks good.
Next i will try to change my Iray-Version ;-)
On December 29, I got a response that the Lucid Dream polygons issue was reported to the bug tracker. There has been no feedback on my help request since then. I bought it on December 23, so I have only a few days before I'll have to just give up and ask to return it within the 30 day window. It is unusable for me the way it is. I've never seen the "Known Issues" have useful information. I'm not sure Daz ever uses that field in the online documentation.
I'd like to confirm that this product works FANTASTICALLY at rendering 'moss,' too.
The tank, buildings, and a few other things use Let it Snow with a moss texture map:
http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Bradley-Overgrown-592986199
I wonder if it could be used to simulate rain with the right textures and proper use of shells. Could be a more comprehensive weather effect on our scenes as it were.
I don't see why not. There's a 'falling snow' thing that could be turned to clearish stuff.
I think someone pointed out that in movies 'rain' was often faked because it doesn't typically show well. Like in 'Singing in the Rain,' they actually mixed milk with the water to get it to show up.
That's what I was thinking, and the geoshell thing seems like it could lend itself well to scattered puddles and small splats of rain...
Thank you DA for posting some screen shots. I was really expecting a PDF to be included with this product to give us some guidelines on how to use it as I find that too many vendors simply expect people to know how to use their products. At least now I have something to go by to get a half decent render without having to spend hours of time playing (although that kind of playing isn't any fun really), which takes the fun out of a product very quickly indeed.
You're welcome, hopefully they will get you on the right track. Please let me know if you run into any issues or have any questions. One of the promos also includes a basic overview of workflow that may be useful..
SnarlyGribbly released his wonderful snow machine script back in 2012 and it worked like a charm (in Poser). It was $0.00.
The DS one seems to work by an entirely different method but the results seem much the same.
It took me long enough but I finally decided to play with it.
edit Is there any way to control the density of the geo shell? It is a complete blob on the figure I decided to use.
Yes - see the post by DA (2 or 3 posts above) with the 5 steps - follow those - step 4 should sort you out for different coverings of snow.
Help! Recently purchased this and am toying with it... why do I get ugly rectangles over my tree branches? I get that the branches and leaves were built using rectangular sheets but shouldn't the snow just cover the leaf/branch and not the (invisible) rectangles? This makes for a really unpleasant snowscape! :P
You need to apply the transparency texture/alpha texture to the geoshell also.
I applied the > Snow Shell then the > Material Preset and finally > Shaders.
Didn't find any files to do with transparency/alpha textures in Smart Content?
Sorry, should have clarified. the original tree probably had a alpha for the leaves. When you apply let it snow, it creates a geoshell of the tree and uses the textures from let it snow, which don't include the alpha from the original tree. Just apply that alpha from the original tree to the geoshell and it should fix the issue.
Hi DMax,
This issue relates, as FSMCDesigns said, to the way the snow geoshells are working with the Oppacity/Alpha maps of the leaves.
The snow is placed onto the geometry through the use of a geoshell, a geoshell is an exact copy of the geometry slightly enlarged to overlay the original tree geometry. If the tree uses flat planes and oppacity maps to give the appearance of leaves then the geoshell has no way of determining the leaf shape that needs to adhered to by the snow. Which is why you are seeing the plane like artifacts. There are number of solution to this issue which are not difficult, but can be a little fiddly to apply.
The quick and dirty method to do this is to simply replace the Alpha/Oppacity texture mask on the DA Snow Shell leaves, with the one used by the original tree leaf surface.
The second way to do this is with the LIE editor, for this we need to apply the leaf shape alpha or oppacity texture to the Snow geoshell as a secondary mask which will then match the leaf shape but retain some of the original alpha mask details also.
The first thing with using a LIE alpha mask is we need to make sure our two overlaid maps are the same size so they align correctly. I find the easiest way to do this is to adjust the snow alpha/oppacity map to the size of leaf alpha/oppacity maps size in an external application. Firstly check the size of the original leaf Alpha mask within the LIE editor (left click on the texture map in the surface pane and select layered Image Editor.) or in a 3rd party image editor. In this case it is 820x600 pixels.
So now we need to create a new copy of the snow alpha map file that matches this same dimension. The easiest way to do this is to apply the Snow Shell then apply the required shader. Now in the surface tab with the DA Snow Shell selected left click on the Oppacity map and select browse, this will open the folder containing the DA Snow alpha/oppacity maps. Find the matching file and select OPEN WITH your image editing app. Now resize the image size to match the original leaf Alpha mask and save as a copy.
Now we can replace the original Snow geoshell alpha map on the DA Snow Shell leaf surface with this newly resized one. Once this is done left click the image and select the Layered Image Editor. Now to apply the Leaf shape mask on top of the snowshell one. To do this click the small + symbol in the layers section and a mask. Now select the resource section and locate the original Leaf/Alpha mask to apply as a new mask layer click accept and we are done. This method can take some experimenting to get right but also allows a lot of flexibilty and even the option of editing the alpha maps on the fly to get that exact look you are after.
I hope this helps, let me know how you go.
Thanks.
Darn, I was just going to say that, but without the pictures...
The snow shader has its own opacity strength/cutout opacity (3DL/Iray). To get the snow to show only on the leaves and not the whole plane, you will have to composite the snow opacity map with the leaf opacity map in LIE. Use the leaf opacity as a mask (you'll probably need to scale it to fit, which can be done directly in LIE). And, you'll have to repeat the process every time you change the snow cover. (Note: I wonder if, for Iray at least, it could be done as a diffuse overlay on the original surfaces?)
Another wrinkle is that a geoshell is offset from the "outward" surface, and can only be on one side. The basic snow shell adds a few adjustments for thick snow, but the snow shell overlay (clothing skin hair) only uses the shell offset, seeing as it should be pretty close to the surface, not inches deep. Even then, the snow will only be on one side of the leaves, which might look odd, and no guarantees that they will all be facing in the same direction. You could add a second shell and offset in the opposite direction and copy the surface settings to cover the other side.
As someone who lives where we get a lot of snow, I'd like to mention that it's pretty rare for deciduous trees to still have their leaves, let alone green ones, when it snows. It happens sometimes! But it looks unnatural and weird because it is.
FSMCDesigns DesignAnvilRazor42 NorthOf45
Thank you for all your very generous and helpful insights and advice... I went the quick and dirty Opacity alpha texture mask way as the other LIE method seems waaaaay beyond my newbie ability!
Yes I finally got some snow on the leaves even though it doesn't look natural. I fully understand, however, that it is due to the design of the tree and not the failure of the Let It Snow product. I will try it again in a brighter scene on buildings/flat planes since it might pose a challenge to produce snow on trees/leaves.
Attached is a before-after of the leaves as well as the completed render so you have an idea of the winter wonderland that I had in mind.
Thank you all and it's so nice to have some snow during our current heat wave!
The snow looks really good.
Note that the snowy terrain and icy lake were pre-loaded with snow/ice from the product "My Cold Place" (https://www.daz3d.com/my-cold-place)
I attempted to add snow to the trees via Let It Snow.
Wondering if we might use this render as a learning tool for Let It Snow (LIS); these were some of the "challenges" which I faced with this image.
(1) Face, Hands, Fingernails: applied shell "figure, clothing, hair (f/c/h)"; shader "sprinking, f/c/h" - nice looking bits of snow patches on the skin and hands, exactly the effect I was looking for but there appears to be a thin semi-opaque film over the entire face and hands...I know that it's the geoshell of LIS on the skin but is there a way to make that less visible and more realistic? Right now it looks like the man is frozen under a film of ice (would be so perfect for a frozen princess in a deep sleep!!!). Or perhaps LIS is not meant to be used in close-up head shots? As far as I know, there are no options for tweaking snow thickness for the f/c/h shell.
(2) Beard: unable to apply shell fch/sprinkling as it looked like the entire beard was literally a thick, textureless block of ice so I applied "DA snow shell" and material preset "light top layer" - the effect was flawless! Except, wasn't I not supposed to use a "building shell" on skin?
(3) Scarf: once again, unable to apply shell fch/sprinking as it just coated every bit of my scarf white so basically it looked like a white, textureless scarf (there was no opacity/alpha texture on the scarf that I could apply on the LIS shell). I then applied "DA snow shell" and material preset "light top layer" as I had done for the beard. At first, the scarf looked entirely white inside with no snow outside but after I tweaked the "snow thickness" a bit, some snow poked through and got on the outside, making it closer to its desired look but the edges were very sharp thus rendering it unusable. Also, it coated the inside of the scarf instead of the exterior where snow should be?
In the midst of a current heat wave, I have been trying very hard to learn and utilise this product but I am sure that I am still missing something about it! Thank you for your insights and thoughts - truly very much appreciated!
There are a few things to consider with these issues.
First up both of your renders looks great so far, I really like the lighting and composition of both images~!
Ok, lets have a look at some of these points.
1. I believe the "thin semi-opaque film over the entire face and hands" effect is being generated by the small gap between the Geoshell and the skin. Effectively you are viewing the snow effect on an angle giving the effect of a thin film as the gap between the skin and the geoshell is visible. You can close this gap by selecting the Snow shell and adjusting the offset distance of the geoshell. See image below.
2.The beard used here appears be a strand based hair of some kind, at the time this product was released strand based hairs were fairly rare. So the preset was mainly designed with transmap style hairs in mind. There are few things to keep in mind with strand based hair but most important is understanding how UV mapping works. The specks of snow/ice are placed according to a square image which aligns over top of the UV map of the object. So for a flat plane with a lock of hair on it you see small flecks dotted across the lock of hair. But strand based hair UV maps work differently, often each hair will have it's own UV map and some will have no UV maps at all. What this means is that it's hard to predict how each snow shader will appear. There are no real hard rules as to which shell to use, they were created simply as best use scenario.The primary difference between each shell type are a few settings. The skin and hair shell is generally pushed only outwards from the surface and the building shell is also projected upwards as to give the impression of snow resting on top of an object.
3. I have an idea what may be going on with this issue but I could be wrong but it's worth following up. Generally the clothing shell will load all white and requires a shader to be applied to it to give the appearance of snow flakes. Make sure you have the correct Snow Shell Overlay selected in the scene tab and also the correct surface in the surface tab as seen below. Now you can apply any of Iray snow shell shaders to the surface for various effects.
Hope this helps
That is very helpful information. Thanks for posting it here.