ANR Snow Drift

Overview

Snow Drift draws round flakes falling over Source, or alone on transparency. Each flake sits at a random depth: near flakes are larger, faster and more opaque, far ones smaller and fainter. Wind carries them sideways and Flutter sways each flake from side to side at its own pace, so the snow drifts rather than drops.

The snow runs by itself for as long as the shot lasts, with nothing to key. Use it for winter scenes, holiday titles and cards, snow globes, or as a quick snow layer on a plate.

Inputs

1. Sourceoptional

   The image the snow falls over. Leave it empty for snow alone on transparency.

2. Maskoptional

   Limits where snow appears: where its alpha is black, Source shows unchanged.

Output. The snow over Source, or alone on transparency with its own alpha, covering the project format.

Quick start

1. Add ANR Snow Drift after the plate, or on its own.
2. Set Color to white (1, 1, 1): the default is a pale blue.
3. Set Frames per Second to your project's frame rate.
4. Set Flakes for density and Flake Radius for size.
5. Set Fall Speed, Wind and Flutter: a slow fall with some flutter for light flakes, faster and straighter for a blizzard.
6. Adjust Opacity, and change Seed for a different pattern.

The panel

The node's panel as Nuke shows it, with the values of a new node. Click any control to see what it does; tabs and sections work as in Nuke.

All controls

Tips

• Stack two or three nodes with different Seed values: small, slow, faint flakes far away and larger, faster ones close, with a defocus on the near layer.
• The flakes are crisp discs; a slight blur makes them softer and more natural.
• To pass the snow behind something in the plate, connect an inverted matte of that object to Mask.
• Negative Wind values blow the snow to the left.
• Speeds and sizes are in pixels, so the same settings look smaller and slower on larger formats.

Good to know

• The snow is drawn flat on the frame: it does not settle, and does not react to the camera or to objects in the plate.
• Nothing is simulated or cached: each frame depends only on its frame number, the settings and the input, so scrubbing, render order and farm renders all give the same frames.

Works with

ANR Rain StreaksAnimated falling rain over your image, in depth: near drops fall faster and look longer and stronger than far ones.ANR Bubble FieldFills the frame with rising, drifting bubbles with rims and highlights, for underwater shots, fizzy drinks, backgrounds and playful titles.