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Paul Teaha creates an outstanding, beautiful snow scene using the famous micro-displacement feature. I am really pleased with all of these amazing renders we are getting after this feature got released!

Artstation Link

12 Comments

  1. Theres something fucked up with the scale of everything. The micro displacement gives too much texture to the snow, it looks like the mountain range is the size of a small rock.
    Loot at the "snow drifts"/"bumps" at the lower inclines, at this scale compared to the mountain, either the mountain is tiny or the details are the size of a small village.

    • I didn't notice too much wrong with it, except that the little dark mountain just left of center in the foreground (at the bottom of the shot) itself looks like a very distant shot of a huge mountain. So yes, the scaling isn't quite right across the scene... but I'd be happy to manage something like this in Blender! Perhaps it actually needs some human elements like houses/huts/roads to help fool the eye.

      • There really isnt much to it, its just a displacement texture (probably a highress height-map from nasa of a mountain range) with micro displacement turned on in options.

        Then just use the same height map to mask the snowy areas with a ramp node and youre done.

        Cycles snow material can be downloaded on blendswap, otherwise its really just a diffuse+glossy mix node with some cell noise as mask.

        Easy peasy. Just needs a relatively devent PC to get the micro displacement into the RAM during BVH build.

        • Yes, its not much. In Blender it's quite simple. The only thing is when you make the mountain in WM. Cause that's how i did it. I didn't take take the heightmap from nasa. I toke it from WM after i did the mountain. Also the colormap

    • Funny how one can look at the same exact thing - and come to diametrically opposite conclusion (with the less than enthused comments that is)... I don't know what the author was pursuing - but when I look at this picture I see a late spring mountain. I find it so perfect, I imagine the whole thing - not just here and now. That's powerful. To me, it's at an elevation such that most the snow will be gone at the end of summer (with remnant in the north face - and the deeper recess of the slope). Right now, it's melting fast - and it refreezes at night - when the sun is high, packs of snow go rolling down the slopes - contributing it its general roughness. The snow is still think but it's also wet and heavy - sinking in between the big rocks - then it re-ices. Generally, it melts at very different speed all based on shade and sun exposure - very influenced by the bed-rock and shadows cast by the terrain. In other words: I find it absolutely plausible - kudos to Paul who created a superb work here. It's perfect to me.

      • Well said. Living in the Rocky Mountains, I find this to be a fantastic depiction of a Spring mountain. Love it! It gets the emotion across perfectly.

    • Honestly, I think the scale looks fine. Details look fine as well. It depends on the height of the mountain, but snow and ice drifts and build up on mountains can easily reach hundreds of feet. Snow also covers peaks of rocks that can be hidden under the snow that could range from hundreds of feet and onwards. Boulder fields found along flat portions and planes along the bottom of features can often span kilometers. I don't quite get where the scale is off to you, but it looks pretty good to me. Maybe not perfect, but definitely good.

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