Easy method for footprints needed for all these lovely winter scenes

cherpenbeck

These winter HDRIs are good, als are several other environments and backgrounds in DAZ. But all of these are lacking a detail which would make them a lot moore believable. Footprints, human or animal. We need something like the head deformer for hair with hats, something which let's us make footprints wherever needed, and in whichever depth we need. So far, People are just hovering above the snowground, or if I put them deeper, it looks totally wrong, because in real life snow would never look untouched and pristine around feet and legs.

scorpio

Nerd3D's tool is still availble at Hivewire

http://hivewire3d.com/footsteps-tool.html

cherpenbeck

Yey! Exactly what I need! Thanks!

Wonderland

Can you do that on a HDRI though? I thought HDRIs were 2D photos so they shouldn't be morphable at all...

FSMCDesigns

Wonderland said:

Can you do that on a HDRI though? I thought HDRIs were 2D photos so they shouldn't be morphable at all...

I wouldn't think so either, but the product at HW looks like a complete mesh product that can be used along with an HDRI

NorthOf45

That product comes with its own imprintable layer, I don't think it will work on just any surface. I've seen products that use displacement maps for the tracks, but they are basically carved in stone and can't be altered. You could make your own tracks with an image editor. There must be PS brushes for that sort of thing.

Chohole

you should remember that this is probably the exact same product that was sold here, with a sku of 8423, released in 2008 so you can see it is not very modern, and was before HDRIs were the common thing that they are today.

ThatGuy

I do have that, http://hivewire3d.com/footsteps-tool.html but for the life of me cannot figure out how to get it to work!

deathbycanon

I do this in post using brushes and layer modes. 

Charlie Judge

You might also be able to use this: https://www.daz3d.com/simtenero-shape-reprojector to project foot shapes on to a ground surface

AnotherUserName

deathbycanon said:

I do this in post using brushes and layer modes. 

Would you mind explaining your process if its not too much trouble?

deathbycanon

If I were going to do actual foot prints I would either just put the shapes in with a round soft brush or find a brush the shape I wanted. Pick a color using the eye dropper tool from the snow, start by picking a darker color. Use that color to make your foot prints, adjust the layer mode, probably multiply and lower the opacity. 

If you want to follow the link to my art studio thread in my signature I just posted the before and after images from a winter composite. I didn't do foot prints in that one because my character just entered the scene, but I did use grounding techniques to make Santa appear as he sank down into the snow, breaking it up a bit as he stepped instead of just erasing his legs and leaving a line where he meets the snow. It's the last post in the thread..

Ivy

Let it snow by coflek-gnorg

Let snow is a stattic.obj prop set. Its made for poser But I use it in Daz Studio for animation all the time.

its what I used in the render

agent unawares

You could find a stock image of footprints and texture a plane with it, use an opacity map to cut out the non-footprint areas. At ground level should line up with the HDR ground.

EDIT: This'll work poorly for deep snow, don't know how heavy you want to go. The HDRIs I've seen generally don't have deep drifts though.

Ivy

This render was done using macix101 iray world dome paired with let it snow

 Grandama got run over by reindeer

cherpenbeck

@deathbycanon : That Snow looks a lot more believable than most. Gives the impression that he really sinks in the snow.

@Ivy : Looks good, but, as you say, it's static. Which diminishes it's use a lot.

What I really need is kind of a snow dedormer in form of footprints from both humans and animals and sledge tracks. Like, usable for Huskys or rendeers with sleges.

Ivy

well at sharecg.com,thery have some track obj's you can use individually but you will need to texture them yourself

http://www.sharecg.com/v/24855/browse/5/3D-Model/Animal-Tracks

Ivy

The nerd set works great in Poser but sadly after daz4  came out it broke the morphs in the nerds setset

cherpenbeck said:

@deathbycanon : That Snow looks a lot more believable than most. Gives the impression that he really sinks in the snow.

@Ivy : Looks good, but, as you say, it's static. Which diminishes it's use a lot.

What I really need is kind of a snow dedormer in form of footprints from both humans and animals and sledge tracks. Like, usable for Huskys or rendeers with sleges.

well you can morph how deep the tracks & path you want them to be and I have used the snow flake props in animation  so you can track and keyframe the snow flakes

 

AnotherUserName

deathbycanon said:

If I were going to do actual foot prints I would either just put the shapes in with a round soft brush or find a brush the shape I wanted. Pick a color using the eye dropper tool from the snow, start by picking a darker color. Use that color to make your foot prints, adjust the layer mode, probably multiply and lower the opacity. 

If you want to follow the link to my art studio thread in my signature I just posted the before and after images from a winter composite. I didn't do foot prints in that one because my character just entered the scene, but I did use grounding techniques to make Santa appear as he sank down into the snow, breaking it up a bit as he stepped instead of just erasing his legs and leaving a line where he meets the snow. It's the last post in the thread..

Cool, thanks! Ill check it out.