Making Snow with Forest Pack PRO
iToo Software has gone off-piste in its latest tutorial for Forest Pack by demonstrating how, when combined with Max’s built-in Blob Mesh object of Thinkbox’s Frost, it can be used to cover geometry with snow.
In this special seasonal installment of our regular tips and tricks episodes, we’re going to look at a somewhat unusual use for Forest Pack – adding snow to trees.
It might not be the obvious choice of plugin for this task, but in this tutorial, we’ll examine not one but two techniques for combining Forest Pack with meshing plugins to add realistic snow to a tree.
We start by looking at how to cover only the branches that are visible to the sky and not obstructed by one another. We’ll then progress to a second approach that builds upon this foundation to add a thick coating of snow by covering all the tree’s upwards facing polygons. Finally, we’ll use our new trees to populate the small environment shown above.
Although we’re focusing on vegetation, this technique can be used to add snow to any object or objects.
In addition to the new tutorial, iToo Software has announced The3dGarden, a new and exclusive range of high-quality tree and foliage models. All the collections are designed to be fully integrated with Forest Pack. After installation, assets are immediately available in the Forest Pack library manager with materials for V-Ray and Corona Renderer to make quickly populating scenes as easy as possible.
This “Making snow with Forest Pack Pro’’ tutorial uses a mature Cedrus from The3dGarden new Summer Trees Collection, which features six species of trees in 3 ages with four variations per tree age. That is over 70 trees in total.
Check out the full collection and download the free sample here.
This is the first of a new regular release schedule of content for Forest Pack Pro. Check it out!
The downloads for this tutorial are compatible with 3ds Max 2015 and above, V-Ray, and Forest Pack Pro.
See you in the next article 😉
RB.
your video tutorial is great.
Wow. Just… wow. What an image… Great stuff. How cool would it be to have a short animation based on this image – with “Driving Home for Christmas” by Chris Rhea as the soundtrack?
The image serves as a reminder of that almost-mantra in ArchViz, i.e. that it’s not about creating an image, but about suggesting an atmosphere/invoking a sentiment. The contrast between the cold exterior and the warm, welcoming house makes me, as a spectator, ‘want to be there’ – or, more accurately, ‘want to be going there’, too.