Snow Demo - small file....

[Lin Evans]

Forgive me if I'm boring everyone with demonstrations of snow making, but after the second blizzard in three days I think I'm obsessed with snow - I can't get away from it - HA!

I realized that the 32 meg Christmas show was a bit large for easy download, especially for those with limited bandwidth so I thought a much smaller file might be appropriate for those interested in this procedure.

This scene, from my backyard, shows a demonstration of the technique I describe in my PDF on snow making with P2E. The demonstration runs for two minutes and the snow begins as a very fine mist - almost like what we call "sleet." Over the two minute period, the consistency and volume of snow increases to a "white out" (which is how it's been around here lately).

The thing of interest, I think, is that the entire snow effect is accomplished with a single PNG file created in Photoshop in just a few seconds as described in the PDF. By using the PFD file four times and simply varying the angle, speed and opacity of the animated PNG as well as the zoom, it's possible to create any snowfall effect from a light "sleet" to large wispy flakes. The more zoom, of course, the larger and softer the appearance of the flakes.

The demo also uses the PNG masking effect to ameliorate or diminish the harshness of snow falling on an already snow packed earth. I purposely used a slightly different hue on the snow in the photo and the falling snow to make it easier to see the effect. In a real simulation, we would want to match the white tones very closely.

Here is a link to the smaller demo file for those interested. Also a link to the PDF description and "how to do it" file. When I get the AV completed I will also furnish the pte file for this demo with the PNG, but it's more important, I think, for the reader to learn how to create the PNG file than simply to have one available to toss into a show. The PDF describes in detail how to create the PNG and part of the experience is learning how to create both the snow PNG as well as how to create PNG "masks".

Link to PDF:

http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/snowforp2e.pdf

Link to Snow Demo:

http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/snowdemo.zip

Happy New Year ...

Lin