Falling snow effect

mark-woollard wrote on 2/23/2006, 4:48 AM
In the days I used an Amiga-based Toaster Flyer (NewTek), there were a number of effects I have not seen elsewhere. One I especially liked was a falling snow effect which really brought shots/photos of winter scenes to life and/or added some timely humour.

I've got Particle Illusion 2.0 SE but it doesn't have a snow flake emitter. From viewing the WonderTouch website, I'm not sure it's been added to their library.

Any suggestions for adding a falling snow effect to a Vegas event?

Thanks
Mark

Comments

kentwolf wrote on 2/23/2006, 7:21 AM
Boris Red has a falling snow effect as well as snow accumularion options.

That is, however, assuming you have Boris Red 3GL.

Sorry I can't help more.
mjroddy wrote on 2/23/2006, 9:35 AM
If you can't afford Boris Red, check out Particle Illusion 3 from wondertouch.com.
Also, if you have a 3D prog, you can use its particle generators. I did a spot (on my web site, if you're interested) where about half the snow was "real" (actually it was soap bubbles blown from a "snow machine") and the other half was from particles generated in Lightwave. But check out PI3. I think you'll like it.
johnmeyer wrote on 2/23/2006, 9:38 AM
You can use Vegas itself. The results are extremely good. There was a VEG file that I downloaded that had all the settings (it uses four overlaid tracks using the noise and the marble effects). I have the VEG file, but I just found it at this link:

Snow VEG

Download and see what you think. It will probably do exactly what you want, and for $0 and no time investment.

FrigidNDEditing wrote on 2/23/2006, 11:42 AM
HEY - now that's a pretty great one - I've actually saved the .veg as a cleaned version that can be nested now - and will possibly use it in the future - Thanks a bunch man - that's great.

Dave
FrigidNDEditing wrote on 2/23/2006, 11:50 AM
Pathlght - if you look in the added monthly libraries there are some snow effects - if you need (and that .veg doesn't do the trick for you - it's really good though) I could create the snow and send you a .png image sequence with transparency - for a minor fee.

Dave
Jim H wrote on 2/23/2006, 8:59 PM
Frigid, what's this monthly library of which you speak?
FrigidNDEditing wrote on 2/24/2006, 12:12 AM
http://www.wondertouch.com/downloads/all_libraries.zip - that's to the file D/L

http://www.wondertouch.com/downloads.asp#IEL - That's to the page itself so that you can download individual libraries if you want.

Dave
Wes C. Attle wrote on 2/24/2006, 3:38 AM
I think there is this effect perfected in Boris Blue free beta that launched this week. I can't test yet though as I'm too lazy to install the required nVidea video drivers.
mark-woollard wrote on 2/24/2006, 4:10 AM
Thanks for all the replies.

I tried the .veg file and it's great and more than meets my needs.

To create a snowy overlay (i.e. with alpha channel), I had to render as uncompressed (with alpha turned on) then in playback, select premultiplied alpha in media properties.

Compared to the old Video Toaster Flyer snow effect, it looks very realistic.
johnmeyer wrote on 2/24/2006, 8:55 AM
Glad I could help. It's amazing what Vegas can do, when someone that really knows what they're doing is let loose. I couldn't have created that snow effect in a million years, yet with just a few effects composited on just three tracks, there it is, perfectly adequate for many projects.

While this VEG isn't available at VASST, in the future, you might look there for VEG files. There are some amazing things people have done that can give you starting points for titles, fX and other things.

[Edit] Sorry 'bout the double-post. I double-clicked the mouse when posting.