Falling snow directly in Poser

Author: dorkati

Tools Needed

• Poser 4 or higher
• Any paint program

Support Files

• snow_trans.zip

I'm using Corel Photo-Paint so I show in this tutorial, step-by-step, how to snow paint in this program, but you can use any paint programs that you have.

In Photo-Paint there is a a weather effect. It's in Creative Effects tools, so it is very easy to make a snow-fall.

Since not all programs have this option, I will show you how you can make your own snow. The process should be similar in other paint programs.

You will want use snow images as transparency maps in Poser.

If you don't want to paint your own snow, you can download my snow transparency map and use it.

Size: 1200 x 900

Our snow should look like the above.

Create a new document. Make it 1200 x 900 for best results. Set background to black and foreground (brush color) to white.

Create a new layer and paint some dots with your airbrush. The shape should be a feathered circle and the size about 6-8 pixels.

Check this picture for details.

Here are some different spot-styles.

Open the 'Brush Settings' docker from the menu bar. In Photo-Paint you find it here: Window– > Dockers– > Brush Settings.

In properties, set the following dab attributes:

Space : 500

(A higher value separates the dabs in the brush stroke - value 1 is a single line)

Spread : 900

(specify the distance between dabs along the width of the brush stroke. A higher value results in a thicker brush stroke)

Number of dabs : 1

Check the differences between value 1 and value 5 on this picture:

Paint lines with this brush settings and check the result (see the picture above)

Create a new layer and increase the brush-size a little. I set it to 10.

Increase the space or spread value too.

Paint some spots sparsely, create new layers and paint more, but not too many if you don't want to make a snowstorm. You can make more layers if you want to make more realistic snow, but be sure not to paint too many spots on layers.

Decrease the brush size to 3 and increase the spread and space to highest value.

Make 3 new layers and paint them with these settings. Outrun with mouse and the spots will not be so dense:

For a better look, change the 3 last (the smallest dots) layers' transparency to different values between 55% and 90%

Go to the one of the layer with the highest number of spots and make a Gaussian blur. Use a value of about 1.5. If you make more layers, make blur on them too(but not on all!) with different values (1, 3 - 1, 8)

You've now made your first snow transparency map. It should look similar to this:

Make more images with similar settings.

Use many layers and set them with different transparency and use different blur settings for more realistic look.

Create some rare and some dense snow images.

If you have many snow transparency maps, save your images, close the paint program and go to Poser.

Make your scene. I used Multiplane Cyclorama with Winter Wonder. Set your characters and load from Props- > Primitives a single sided square.

First, adjust the xScale to 400% and yScale to 300%, to match the transparency map ratio.

Than you can increase the Size with Scale dial.

Go to the material room and set the properties. Follow the setting as shown:

Be sure to set Specular and ambient color to black for best results. Use white for Diffuse color and use one of your snow transparency maps for transparency. Set this value to 1 and the transparency edge to 1, too.

If you want, you can use this map as a bump map too.

Check the result:

Repeat this procedure 2 or 3 more times.

Load a single square, resize, apply transparency map.

Load several snow images as transparency maps for best results, but you can use only one if you want.

Use different zTrans for more realistic looks. There should be a panel in front of your scene, one in middle and one in back, and anywhere else if you want.

For the back panel, you need to load two squares and juxtaposition them. Use same zTrans value and same Scale value on each of them, because the rear panel should be bigger than the others, but you don't want a stretched transparency map.

Check the result by using only 1 map 3 times.

I hope this tutorial was helpful and enables you to create many nice winter-scenes.

If you have any question, feel free to contact me:

fairyfan@freestart.hu