Help? adding light sparkle to cg snow ?

[macool]

I have a scene where I’d like to have a camera move about in a snowy scene. I was guessing that the crystallized snow would sparkle as the camera/light direction was changing. Does anyone have any ideas/techniques they could suggest to produce this FX more or less in post?

Thank you

[Saran Sirikasamsap]

i worked on a few shots like that but with real snow on location…it only sparkles a teeny weeny BIT IF there AINT too much cloud cover… i would prolly use sapphire glint to add a few here and there or even simply animate a gain CC for those specific layers of snowflakes for maybe a few frames…keeping a 1-2 frame lead in and 3-4 frame lead out gives nice results

[Richard]

If you don’t have sparks or wish to be a little creative you could try…

In Batch.

A luma key on the snow.
Multiply that result with the original snow element.
Add a blur… for the time being, just put in some low values.
Then add the result to your BG/Comp.

You will have a natural looking glow on the snow and you can now play around with the strength of the Luma key and Blur to animate or change this to suit your requirements…. this can be used to create glints/glows etc… works within the highlights of your image, unless you invert you luma matte : )

Hope this helps.

This technique also works well with other comping apps.

[Junius Lu]

I agree with whats been posted, but I’d like to add a tip of my own. Use a fractal noise map on a layer and overlay it onto the luminosity of the snow. You will have to make the layer quite transparent otherwise it will look over the top. I find it helps for faking slight atmospheric variations.

If you don’t have any fractal noise animations try this:

Add a solid layer, black and create coloured noise. Next use box blur with 1 or two iterations. Then crush a lot of the detail out with levels reblur with box blur. Add a little noise and so. If you repeat this cycle of effects eventually you will start getting random moving blobs which can be great for overlaying onto unpredictable events

[Saran Sirikasamsap]

or use the sparkfractal thats in build in flame, /usr/discreet/flamexxx/spark folder

[Aaron]

The suggestions were very helpful as always! One thing, I am using either Shake or DF to do this,, no Flame. I guess that’s either good or bad depending on who you talk to. OK thanks alot!

[Author]

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