Creating Snow with VRayStochasticFlakesMtl
This page provides a tutorial for using VRayStochasticFlakesMtl
Overview
This tutorial explains how to use the VRayStochasticFlakesMtl for creating a glittering snow material.
Tutorial Assets
To download the scene used in this tutorial, click on the button below.
Tutorial steps
In this tutorial, we will use a VRayFastSSS2 material to scatter some light inside our snow. Then we'll blend a VRayStochasticFlakesMtl on top of it to achieve the glittering look of snow using a VRayBlendMtl.
The VRayStochasticFlakesMtl is used as a coat in a VRayBlendMtl for achieving a mirror-like reflective result. It can also be used as a base material, when the desired effect needs to be more diffuse. We'll use the flakes as a coat to add glitter to our snow material.
Part I: Creating subsurface scattering with VRayFastSSS2
1. Start by opening the Material Editor and creating a VRayFastSSS2 material. Change its name to Snow.
2. Create a VRayBlendMtl material and name it Blend.
3. Connect the Snow to the Base of the Blend material.
4. Select the Snow material and change the sub-surface color to a light blue (R233,G252, B255).
5. Change the scatter color to white (R255,G255, B255).
6. Change the phase function value to 0.7.
7. Assign the VRayBlendMtl to the geometry and make a test render.
The snow already looks good, but there's no glitter.
Parit II: Creating a glittering coat with VRayStochasticFlakesMtl
8. Create a VRayStochasticFlakesMtl and name it Flakes.
9. Connect the Flakes material to the coat 1 slot of the VRayBlendMtl.
Now that all the materials are created and connected, we can adjust the Flakes.
10. Adjust the number of flakes. There is no perfect value. Some experiments are usually required to achieve a good result. In this case, for the ground plane, a value of 30 000 works well. A value of around 3 000 is used for the snowman.
11. Adjust the highlight glossiness to make the highlights more blurry (or glossy). A value of 0.4 works well for this scene.
12. Set the blur angle to 0.3. This makes the flakes look a bit less sharp.
13. Change the reflection filter color to tint the reflections. For this tutorial, we've used a dark grey color (R30, G30, B30).
14. Change the mapping type to Explicit UVW channel if the geometry has proper UVW mapping. Alternatively, you can also use Triplanar from object XYZ.
Note: In this scene, a flake scale of 1.0 can be used with Explicit UVW channel or 0.01 with Triplanar from object XYZ.
15. Render the final image.
Notes
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The VFB lens effects tools are used in the final render to make the snow highlights look like they're sparkling. We've used the Glare effect with a weight of 100 and a size of 8 with the intesity mask set to 1.
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The scene is illuminated by a VRaySun and VRaySky. The ground plane is a simple deformed plane with dimensions of 1000 m by 1000 m.