Snow

Snow fills a volume of your scene with falling snow. Close to the camera you see six-armed crystals that rock and flip as they fall and glint in the sun; further away the snowfall becomes soft specks that fill the whole volume. Gusts sweep through it and gather the flakes into drifting curtains.

How it works

Bigger flakes fall faster than small ones, and each flake slides side to side on a slow spiral, the way a real flake drifts through the air. A steady wind carries everything downwind, slow swirls are layered on top, and waves of gusts travel with the wind, shoving flakes ahead of them and thickening the snowfall into bands. The sunlit side of each flake takes the snow colour and the side away from the sun takes a cooler shade.

Settings

• Density and Flake Size: how heavily it snows and how big the flakes are.
• Flutter and Tumble: the side-to-side spiral, and the rocking and flipping of the crystals.
• Glint: how much the crystals sparkle in the sun.
• Wind Strength, Wind Direction, Turbulence and Gustiness: the weather.
• Bands: how strongly the gusts gather the snow into curtains.

The cursor can be a gust of air, a shelter the snow slides off with a dry space beneath it, or a warm hand that melts flakes into glowing droplets.

Use it for

Winter campaigns, holiday pages and mountain landscapes. Pair it with Mountains or Ice Crystals.