SOFT WARE: BLENDER
Pietro Chiovaro replies
There are several ways to create a snowfall effect in 3D software, from the use of actual footage to par ticle systems. For this tutorial I’m going to focus on that particle system method using Blender. It’s a simple workflow that can create a realistic effect in no more than five quick minutes.
In this particular scene I added the snow to bring extra enchantment to the shot, along with some good lighting to recreate this urban alley in the best way possible. To create the snow, I decided to start by using a Particle System that will spew out the snowflakes. This method is relatively simple, but at the same time complex if the wrong parameters are set.
First of all we need to create a Plane object and scale it to cover the area you want the snow to fall; in this case I placed it on top of the buildings. This plane will serve as the emitter for our snowflake par ticles and is where we’ll need to set up the Particle System’s Physics Simulation parameters. After that we can create a simple snowflake, something like a Sphere or Ice Sphere, but nothing too detailed or performance consuming. Try to use a minimal amount of polygons.
Now we can add a Particle System to the Plane and set the type to Emitter. Adjust the Emission settings such as the Number, Start, End and Lifetime to control the amount and duration of the snow par ticles. There are no fixed values, but make sure the snowflakes reach the floor before disappearing and add the right number of particles in relation to the effect y
