I am creating an area with snow, it's a first for me and I wondered if any of you have any thoughts or tips on good ways to do this.
I have one practical tip:
Don't lay down your snow texture straight away. Work with a grass texture then swap it out later. Otherwise it can hurt the eyes and it very hard to make out the terain as you mod it.
PJ
Let it snow
Débuté par
PJ156
, oct. 05 2010 10:03
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#2
Guest_Chaos Wielder_*
Posté 05 octobre 2010 - 11:22
Guest_Chaos Wielder_*
Guest_Chaos Wielder_*
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Texture variation is your friend. Snow can, of course, look like one great mono-tone pattern in reality, but it makes for a dull looking area in-game. Sometimes aesthetics need to be sacrificed for practicality.
#3
Posté 06 octobre 2010 - 01:14
kamalpoe
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In a camp, the snow in the immediate area around a cooking pot/fire etc will have melted from the heat. Darker textures will also be needed where the camp occupants mostly walk. In recent snow, the ground under tents may have the original ground texture. Many tents can be tinted shades of white to imitate being snow covered.
If it's actually snowing, you can control the strength of the storm by changing the fog distance and colors. Of course for a serious storm you'd need to make a custom vfx to get blowing snow and not hte gently falling snow included in the toolset. Among other things, my tutorial on the vault for vfx specifically covers custom snow vfx. http://nwvault.ign.c...s.Detail&id=127
You can texture snow early on (you really shouldn't though), just set the area to sunrise, which gives much more contrast for snow.
If it's actually snowing, you can control the strength of the storm by changing the fog distance and colors. Of course for a serious storm you'd need to make a custom vfx to get blowing snow and not hte gently falling snow included in the toolset. Among other things, my tutorial on the vault for vfx specifically covers custom snow vfx. http://nwvault.ign.c...s.Detail&id=127
You can texture snow early on (you really shouldn't though), just set the area to sunrise, which gives much more contrast for snow.
#4
Posté 06 octobre 2010 - 01:21
M. Rieder
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I've been working alot with snow recently. I had to completely re-texture my area once and tweak it a whole bunch. I hope that these tips will help make things easier for you...
PJ 156 wrote...
"Don't lay down your snow texture straight away. Work with a grass texture then swap it out later. Otherwise it can hurt the eyes and it very hard to make out the terain as you mod it."
If you alter the light settings, you don't have to do this, see below.
1) make sure the day/night settings are appropriate, or else the light will be too bright and wash out the texture and it will all appear the same. I lifted the light settings from the prefab "Winter Farm". They were great. I also used that area to get a feel for a good texture palette to work with. Here's the link:
http://nwvault.ign.c...s.Detail&id=308
2) If you have houses, you can generate the effect of having snow on the roof by taking the "snow patch" placeable, increasing the height on scale, then dropping them into the roof of the house you want to make snowy. This works really well. You can do the same with the snow covered mile marker.
3) Snow 1 is a good base texture. Snow 2 and 4 are good to make rough patches. Snow 3 works really well under trees. Snow 5 and 6 seem to go well with transitions to rocky patches.
4) When you blend textures from snow to another (mud 1, for example if you are making a dirt road), you have to use finder gradients to blend, or else it is a little too abrupt. With most textures I am happy with using 20% then 40% then 60% pressure to blend, but with snow, I thought it looked better with 10% increments to blend. Very time consuming, but it looks good.
5) For frozen streams, I used the "ice patch" placeable, made it 2x as large then sunk it into the terrain of the riverbed. If you want to be able to walk on the ice, plan ahead and make your streambed flat, not deep. I didn't plan ahead and it took some time to fix.
6) To make a snow covered bridge, use the snow coered fence posts with the snow covered planks and some stone blocks for supports. (I dindn't make this up, I saw it on the "Winter Farm" prefab).
7) Snow 2 and 4 usually go well with a slight raise in elevation, much as a lighter texture in other texture palettes would.
8) I found that a little white fog makes the whole area seem a little colder and snowy.
9) I saw a great blizzard effect recently on the forums. I think that Kamalpoe posted it in the "what makes a good area" thread.
10) Raising terrain next to buildings and other large placeables, then putting down a snow texture gives an excellent snowdrift effect.
11) Turn on "normal mapped terrain" in your toolset or else all the snow textures will look about the same.
12) Don't overlook the icicles placeable. It looks really good.
When I first started working with snow, I was kicking myself for choosing to make a module located in a snowy location, but once I got the hang of it, making snowy areas that look good is fun and surprisingly easy.
Best of luck.
PJ 156 wrote...
"Don't lay down your snow texture straight away. Work with a grass texture then swap it out later. Otherwise it can hurt the eyes and it very hard to make out the terain as you mod it."
If you alter the light settings, you don't have to do this, see below.
1) make sure the day/night settings are appropriate, or else the light will be too bright and wash out the texture and it will all appear the same. I lifted the light settings from the prefab "Winter Farm". They were great. I also used that area to get a feel for a good texture palette to work with. Here's the link:
http://nwvault.ign.c...s.Detail&id=308
2) If you have houses, you can generate the effect of having snow on the roof by taking the "snow patch" placeable, increasing the height on scale, then dropping them into the roof of the house you want to make snowy. This works really well. You can do the same with the snow covered mile marker.
3) Snow 1 is a good base texture. Snow 2 and 4 are good to make rough patches. Snow 3 works really well under trees. Snow 5 and 6 seem to go well with transitions to rocky patches.
4) When you blend textures from snow to another (mud 1, for example if you are making a dirt road), you have to use finder gradients to blend, or else it is a little too abrupt. With most textures I am happy with using 20% then 40% then 60% pressure to blend, but with snow, I thought it looked better with 10% increments to blend. Very time consuming, but it looks good.
5) For frozen streams, I used the "ice patch" placeable, made it 2x as large then sunk it into the terrain of the riverbed. If you want to be able to walk on the ice, plan ahead and make your streambed flat, not deep. I didn't plan ahead and it took some time to fix.
6) To make a snow covered bridge, use the snow coered fence posts with the snow covered planks and some stone blocks for supports. (I dindn't make this up, I saw it on the "Winter Farm" prefab).
7) Snow 2 and 4 usually go well with a slight raise in elevation, much as a lighter texture in other texture palettes would.
8) I found that a little white fog makes the whole area seem a little colder and snowy.
9) I saw a great blizzard effect recently on the forums. I think that Kamalpoe posted it in the "what makes a good area" thread.
10) Raising terrain next to buildings and other large placeables, then putting down a snow texture gives an excellent snowdrift effect.
11) Turn on "normal mapped terrain" in your toolset or else all the snow textures will look about the same.
12) Don't overlook the icicles placeable. It looks really good.
When I first started working with snow, I was kicking myself for choosing to make a module located in a snowy location, but once I got the hang of it, making snowy areas that look good is fun and surprisingly easy.
Best of luck.
#6
Posté 06 octobre 2010 - 08:17
Banshe
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Check out SGK73's Deepsnow Prefab:
http://nwvault.ign.c...s.Detail&id=253
He made it so that you sink into the snow (a walkmesh trick). He also has a slowing the movement rate script.
Finally, use his Day/Night settings and read through the comments on the page. A ton of good info for making snow areas.
http://nwvault.ign.c...s.Detail&id=253
He made it so that you sink into the snow (a walkmesh trick). He also has a slowing the movement rate script.
Finally, use his Day/Night settings and read through the comments on the page. A ton of good info for making snow areas.
#7
Posté 06 octobre 2010 - 03:23
dunniteowl
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@ M. Rieder: Thank you sir, may I have another?! That was excellent information and I thank you greatly for that. Thanks for the intro PJ156, if you didn't post this, I would probably have never known all this cool stuff (and I mean, cool.)
dno
dno
#8
Posté 06 octobre 2010 - 03:42
Hellfire_RWS
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If you need more snow texture variation you can use this. It hasnt been updated since the release of MOTB.
I halted development because MOTB came with snow stuffs
The snowy trees override the default trees, so don't use those if you want non snow trees in your mod.
There is probably qa way to clone Speed trees now, I jsut have never looked back into it.
RWS Snow pack With Snowy trees!
I halted development because MOTB came with snow stuffs
The snowy trees override the default trees, so don't use those if you want non snow trees in your mod.
There is probably qa way to clone Speed trees now, I jsut have never looked back into it.
RWS Snow pack With Snowy trees!
#9
Posté 06 octobre 2010 - 06:24
PJ156
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Thanks guys this is great. Loads to think about and play with here.
I'm off to the mountains.
PJ
I'm off to the mountains.
PJ
