snow falling from tree branch

[nicoladanese]

hey

I need to put some snow on top of a tree branch - see attached image - and then after a shake of the branch the snow has to fall down

I found some tutorials on how to place snow on top of objects but I'm not sure what's the best way to simulate the falling pieces

 any help would be great!cheers

[benne5]

I suggest 3 different passes for the falling snow. 

1) Break up your snow by fracturing chunks and simulating some of them.  Some can remain behind. 

2) Emit lots of particles with a bit of noise applied to them.

3) Instance or copy stamp some snow-like chunks onto a portion of the particles.  You can cull a bunch of them out from your previously used particles pass.

Then composite them together.  Or if you wish you could have them all interact with each other in dops. 

Good Luck!

[nicoladanese]

Hey Matthew

 

thanks for your reply, while searching around I found this and it looks great to me, looks like wet sand is doing a pretty good job mimicking snow. If I understood well your approach is more of a rigid body style, with particles on top of it to sell the ideas of snow, am I right?

 

 

[benne5]

Yes, this also looks like a great method. 

Especially if you want to break apart based on attributes.  But if you don't need to show that kind of fidelity.  A quick and dirty way to show this is to simulated packed rigid bodies and emit a bunch of particles either from a source of your choosing or the simulated pieces.  Add some noise to the particles to give it a wispy motion.  And then if you want a variation of smaller pieces beyond the varying particle size you can instance or copy stamp small chunks onto a some of the particles.  Finally, add a decent snow shader applied to the rigid body and instanced/copy stamped pieces.  

Good luck