Creating "rocky" snow

[Zas]

Hey.

How would I create snow like this ( http://www1.istockphoto.com/file_thu...up_of_snow.jpg ) easiest? I don't need to make a lot of snow like that, only a small portion will be visibl. I thought of making bits of snow with particles, but then I don't know how to make the bits look random enough and actually attach into each other a bit. Any ideas?

I don't mean a snow material - I have a good one - i just need to make the geometry. It's not for a snowy plain, that would be easy enough to make. Just look at the picture to get the idea. It will be a close up and feature snow like that.

[Jelmer]

Maybe you could pull it off with displacement and bump maps, displacement works quite well for close ups, with some additional (alpha mapped) particles , scattered using particle flow.

[Zas]

Hmm. Using smoke as a displacement map wields some nice results. It looks a bit jagged though.

[Jelmer]

alright, maybe you need to add some more geometry so it will be more accurate/smooth?

[Zas]

Oh, nevermind that. It was just the lack of quality of a test render. It looks smoooooooth with better qualities :]
However smoke displacement only looks too uniform.. I guess I will have to do something with particles like you suggested.
Here is a little screenshot I took. You might be able to grasp the concept of what I am aiming at here, hehe. Inspired by lotr fellowship of the ring - that movie had a well composited scene in it which I am trying to mimic here.

http://img112.imageshack.us/img112/8...ingtestnd9.jpg

[Jelmer]

looks cool so far, you can probably break up the uniformness by adding a noise or bitmap as well, which you can use as a mask to combine 2 different maps. Also, make sure you create a nice shader, maybe even do SSS?