So an idea’s been rolling around in my head for some time, like a marble in an abandoned house. And now I see that Elder Scrolls: Skyrim is going to do something like it.
I want to create some sort of dynamic snow system; one where tons of snow can gradually collect on terrain and objects. I am familiar with particle colliders, but at this scale that would be a bit unreasonable.
I had thought about some sort of universal static item shader, which every single one of my larger objects would use. (Normal displacement map, whatever that’s called; only working for normals in a particular direction) It’d handle stuff like wet, slick surfaces or snow.
But this whole concept is so abstract it’s hard to know where to begin. Anyone have some suggestions?
If I understand you correctly, you are saying that you want to de-couple the particle system (actual snow) from the snow created on the object. I have never doen something like this, but can’t you use the same principle where you shoot a bullet into a box and it “paints” the hole (as a texture) on the box. Now i have another idea, but I have no clue how this would look. You can maybe have a coupe of materials for little snow, mediumSnow, fullSnow etc. Then after certain time intervals fade very slowly from one material to the next. This will also be good on performance.
@chubbspet There will be mountains, rocks, and trees, which will all accumulate snow on them.
The snow will gradually increase in its depth, and you will be able to carve paths in it when you walk through it.
The snow will also turn to mush and melt away. I haven’t figured out how I’m going to do all of this, but I’m hopeful that mesh deformation and tessellation will provide the answers. Those are the features I’m planning for the version 1 release. Give me a couple weeks, I just built this version 2 nights ago, it will look very different in a weeks time.
That demo looks VERY cool! I love how the snow accumulates over time, and the shadows (bump mapping) look very realistic! Good job! Looking forward to seeing the next demo! I can’t imagine how much better that could look!
next up I’ll be making the snow pile into random mounds, which you’ll be able to make and draw paths through.
Then I’m going to make the snow melt into slush on command.
Finally I’ll try to figure out how I’m going to get the shader to integrate with Unity’s terrain system, what a headache thats going to be. No promises on the terrain. It’ll be on the asset store mid July.
Edit: Sorry for hijacking your thread Tuah, I’ll start an offical Snowscape thread in a week.
Can i use this shaders to have snow like in skyrim: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hwt7GrX0rw
By that i mean to have snow at least on all faces of the mesh that are facing up.
