Snow Coverage shader

A procedural snow layer for a PBR surface

This shader allows you to add a layer of snow to a base surface, with various masking controls and a separate Tessellated version that adds vertex displacement for adding 3D snow piles

Mesh Requirements

When using the Tessellated varion of this shader - it is recomended to use a fairly uniformly subdivided base mesh for better final results

Snow Coverage Demo

Snow Coverage Inspector

Main Settings

Snow Level: Controls the level of snow coverage
Snow Direction: Controls the world-space direction of where the snow is coming from. E.g. (0,1,0) will create a snow coverage from above (default value)
Base Normal Strength: Controls how much the base layer Normal map affects the snow coverage
Edge Nudge: Adjusts the edge of the snow coverage
Edge Width: Adjusts the width of the edge blend gradient for the snow coverage
Edge Offset: Flat coverage offset, higher numbers allow to coat the whole mesh in snow
Mask Edge: Enables additional masking of the snow coverage edge
Edge Mask: Additional mask that will be applied to the edge of the snow coverage. Useful for adding variation and breaking up a perfect coverage edge. Only visible if Mask Edge is enabled
Mask Range: Adjusts how much of the snow coverage edge will be affected by the snow edge mask. Lower values make the final edge sharper
Mask Contrast: Adjusts the values of the snow coverage mask texture. Setting to minimum will eliminate the mask completely. Setting to full width will multiply the base gradient by the mask texture
Show Snow Mask: Enables debug visualization for the snow level

Height Effects Settings

Height Settings

Only Available if Parallax is on

This section only appears if you have Parallax enabled and the Height texture specified in the base material.

Use Height: Enables height-based effects for improved blending
Invert Height Effects: Inverts the height effects. Enabling this will change whether the snow will accumulate on the height map peaks or in the valleys first
Height Smoothing: Smooths out the height map effects. Higher values will allow the snow to cover more of the surface
Height Influence: Controls the overall strength of the height effects. At 0 the height will be ignored, as if "Use Height" is off

Snow Surface Settings

UV Mode: Controls how snow texture UVs are calculated
- Original UV: Uses the mesh's main UV channel
- Triplanar: Performs triplanar projection. This is more expensive as it triples all the texture samples. Use Original UV when possible
Triplanar Blend: Controls the triplanar blend between different world axis
Triplanar Power: Controls the sharpness of the triplanar blend edge between different world axis

The following are the usual PBR material settings

Albedo
Smoothness
Smoothness Level
Normal
Normal Strength

Displacement Settings

Displacement Settings Snow Settings

Only Available in the Tessellated version

These options are only provided in the Snow Coverage Tessellated version of this shader.

Displacement Map: A texture to adjust where snow piles show up on the mesh. This uses world-space XZ coordinates to map to the surface
Map Strength: Controls how much the Displacement Map affects the overall snow pile distribution. At 0 this will create snow coverage that perfectly copies the surfaces below it
Edge Mask Strength: Controls how much the Snow Edge Mask affects the snow piles displacement effects. Mainly for fine tuning and avoiding jagged edges coming from high frequency noise masks
Extrusion Level: Controls how much the surface will be displaced along the Snow Direction