Anyone know where I can get a nice set of snow-covered evergreens? I've seen lots of nice trees, but for winter scenes most folk just seem to hide the leaves. I'd like evergreens, but trees aren't convincing if the ground is covered with snow but the trees are nekkid.

Not much luck searching Rendo and DAZ so far. All I've found ETDA's Winter Wonderland, which looks like it has one tree prop without lights, others I guess are Christmas trees. And they don't look very real....

TIA.

RDNA have some Winter Pines (with snow) and some winter trees (without foliage)

You should do a search in this or the freestuff forum for snow material. There was one or two threads about a snow shader which have to be added to the normal material and will provide snow on the upper surface. So you can turn each object into a snow covered on, even evergreen trees ... ok, the mapping should be right done but mostly it's working.

Or have a look for this in the material room tutorials collection thread by acadia.

Did the search myself and here you go:
www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2742393&page=1p

There is a second updated download of the material in the middle of the first page, so not only the download at the beginning.

As the poster said it is WIP, but never was completed in that thread. But I have wiorked with the mt5 and got well usable results.

Anthanasius took a crack at it, too, recently - came out pretty nice.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2788940

Give it a try. I haven't had time to study the matter any more closely than I had last year. GC is going to be key in this type of shader.

bagginsbill: I was actually using the snow shader from that thread, albeit modified. But from looking at the materials with my very small modicum of knowledge, I assumed that it wouldn't have the effect of just being applied to upward surfaces, and I didn't notice the effect in any of the accompanying images in the thread. (I don't really have any good evergreens in my runtime... I guess I should have experimented, but it never occurred to me it could be done without doing some sort of grouping with the materials.)

I do have a question about that Anthanasius shader, though, as I'm using it on the ground. What controls the size of the effect? I did the WIP render above, and the grounds looks... busy. I'm not even entirely sure which direction will make that better, but I'm thinking it should be much smaller.

JoEtzold: that's looks exactly what I'm after; will try to work with that.

So, I just need some good tree models. Wonder how fober's trees in his Fober's The Lake set are. Kinda hard to tell quality from his promo renders.

Attached Link: http://www.runtimedna.com/Plants-Naturals/?page=6

Thanks, Virtua. I'd forgotten about that Naturals series. The evergreens I'm finding so far are shrubs rather than trees, but surely the trees will be in there too; it's a bit collection.

I'm probably not going to worry about a snow MAT given how that one shader looks. I just need a good set of trees.

EDIT: Old Wood Pines Megapack looks very nice, though I wasn't really looking to spend quite that much.

Attached Link: Snarlygribbly's Snow Machine examples (Poser)

Cheers,
Snarlygribbly

Wow, those look really cool! (Er, no pun intended....)

For applying it to upward surfaces, can you use one of the math tools to do that?  Like the Du Dv variables?

Quote - Winterclaw:
For applying it to upward surfaces, can you use one of the math tools to do that?  Like the Du Dv variables?

You mean vertical surfaces?  Displacement wouldn't be affected, because it works along the direction of the normal.  It would still work.  (Or do I misunderstand the issue?)

But, I for one would love for bagginsbill to elaborate on the Du Dv node, et al, because I see some node names that appear to be partial derivatives, and -depending on whether they are read or write operators-  could enable a tear to follow a natural path down a cheek, a marble ball to run along a kugelbahn track, or pick out the outside "corners" of a geometry mesh to selectively apply scuff marks in a realistic distribution.  :D

Oh, you mean snarlygribbly's snow machine, rather than Anthanasius' snow material.  Ooops.

Upward snow was described in the post JoEtzold linked. It involves the N node - examine the normal. If N.y is > 0, the surface is pointing upward. Helgard renamed the node to be called Snow Percentage, but it is still an N node.

Du and Dv are derivatives, describing the rate of change in U or V with respect to the rendered pixels. I have used these to some extent to anti-alias procedural shaders, sort of like texture filtering. The ones you want for measuring curvature would be dNdU and dNdV, but they don't really work for meshes.

She's a miracle girl... didn't leave any tracks in the snow. ;-)

Ah the Snow Machine link looks a bit dead atm. :)

Will try again later.

Attached Link: Snarlygribbly's Snow Machine

Anyway, if anyone is interested in the work in progress, here is the link.

The download link is restricted to testers only at the moment, but if anyone seriously wants to have a go with it and provide me with some useful feedback I'd certainly be interested.

The final product will be a freebie for everyone to have fun with.

Even better, if anyone cleverer than me (i.e. most people here, I'd imagine :-) wants to help me improve it then I'd be keen to collaborate.

Some of the nodes generated by the script were first put together by Anthanasius, referred to by Bagginsbill above. Anthanasius has very graciously allowed me to use them as part of the Snow Machine.

Cheers,
Snarlygribbly

Sounds good, Snarlygribbly! 

Ah, there was a link up top :) That's the one I tried.
Holler when you're done, but if you want some testing, I'll be happy to help. (Running P8 here, on Win7 64 bit)

@Believable3D

Sugestion, I would put some noice in the displacement of the coat to simutale some furr-ring?
And maybe ? ? ?

try the blender:

Put the coats texture and the noice in a blender, and connect that into displacement.

play a little, it would come out pretty nice I think.

Thanks, vilters. This was really just a play at the Snow Machine, I didn't really do any work other than setup and posing. I should have at least put footprints in the snow. I think you're right though - that outfit (which is Sanbie freebie) has some great potential with some displacement and materials work.

@ Silke

It'd be cool if you would do some testing! I've  sitemailed you the password for the download link.

Cheers

Will do :)