Snow, Biomes

Last week's video was about adding variety to foliage.

Here are three new videos that show something similar but at a larger scale. The first two show transitions from snowy terrain to green terrain. The last one goes from green to some kind of rocky desert.








Do not pay too much attention to the sound, you will hear chipping birds no matter if it is snow or desert.

I did some improvement on the LOD switches. They are still happening pretty much on your face, but in general should be smaller.

June Snow

It was a long weekend in Quebec. The snow is long gone, but it rained a lot. I got some time to improve the placement of snow textures in the virtual world.

As I have it, snow appears in a scene for one of two reasons: there is some volume accumulated on the ground, or a layer of snow covers other features like rocks.

When it accumulates it becomes a feature of its own. It usually forms waves and dunes. I found it can be recreated as a 3D volume layer using some form of multi-fractal ridged noise. To this volume I apply a snow texture.

When it appears on other features like rocks and boulders, I model it as a set of additional texture layers for the rock or boulder material. This means that every material needs to know how it will look when covered by snow. I will post about the material system in the future. As you will see, adding snow takes little effort.

Here are some screenshots showing the latest results I've got:

The three screenshots were taken out of the same mountains.

I found not so hard to re-create areas that were completely covered by snow. The tricky part was the transition zones, where snow gradually disappears and the ground starts to show again. The last screenshot shows a transition area. I still need to work on them.