snow flakes
what is it?
this plug adds snow flakes to your clip. "why would I need that?" -- you’d ask. well, for one, it frees you from filming your clips while using real snow, since you can add snow to any clip after the fact. plus, it helps you to get into the winter spirit. plus, it comes with more features and tricks than you can shake a christmas tree at.
even though it doesn’t look that way in preview (believe us, we know), this plug actually creates extremely realistic looking snow flakes in your clip.
this plug showcases our particle effects and image ops library that we developed over the past months. just think of what else we could do for you -- and don’t forget to ask!
what should I use it for?
use this plug to add realistic snow (or sleet, or ash if you live near a volcano) to your clip.
features
area of effect
the effect is only visible inside this rectangular area. to resize the rectangle, simple click and drag its handles. to move it, click and drag inside.
opacity:
this slider controls how much of the original image shines through (making solid snow flakes transparent
flakes:
this slider controls how many flakes may be falling at the same time
density:
this controls the probability with which a flake may fall. this slider is only useful if you are using few snow flakes.
flake color:
many people may now think “now that’s original - colored snow!”. but it does have a purpose: you sometimes need to make the snow slightly off-color to the background (when the clip is very bright), or the same color as the too-sparse snow in your clip that you want to enhance (in this case you need to make the snow the same color as the snow in the clip).
also, as stated above, you can make the snow grey or even black, to emulate ash raining on your scene.
start empty:
this rather silly option will start out with an empty screen, and all flakes will drop from above. be sure to use this only with few flakes selected, else the effect looks rather strange.
snowdrift:
this slider controls the ‘loftyness’ of the flakes as they descent. the more to the right, the more they are influenced by the air, resulting in a more jittery behavior.
pile-up:
if you want the snow to slowly pile up when it lands on the bottom of the screen, choose this option.
method:
this pop-up pre-selects how the snowflakes affect your clip.
- normal
in normal mode, the flakes are drawn directly on the clip. you can still apply transparency, though.
- darken
this method darkens the whole clip, and lightens those parts that are affected by the flakes. the flakes themselves are invisible. the result looks like the scene is lit by strange, glowing flakes. the color you choose for the flakes affects the ‘glow’.
- brighten
this method brightens the whole clip, and darkens those portions that the flakes are drawn on. the flakes themselves are invisible, but look like (color-tinted) shadows cast on the scene.
- darken relative
this method creates an alpha mask from the snow flakes, and darkens the clip where the snowflakes are. it looks like snow shadow is falling. the color you choose for the snow flakes only affects the darkness of the shadow.
- brighten relative
this method also creates an alpha mask from the snow flakes, but instead of darkening the parts of the clip, they are slightly brightened. again, the color you choose only affects the brightness of the flake.
wind:
as you probably have guessed, this will make the snowflakes drift to either left or right side. if the slider is centered there is no wind.
speed:
this slider determines how fast the fastest flakes are falling.
movie slider, left, right:
this slider lets you move through the clip (the left and right buttons on a frame-by-frame basis). note that you preview the normal clip (without the effect applied). you can use this feature to advance to the frame that contains the color you are looking for, or to verify that everything you want is inside the active area.
all contents © 2003 by cf/x and christian franz
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