Blowing Snow Simulation - 3ds Max, TyFlow, EmberGen, and rendered in Nvidia USD Composer
In this blowing snow simulation, I first used 3ds Max + TyFlow to create the ground plane, rocks, snow covering mesh (tymesher with blobmesh), and snow particles. The ground, rocks, and snow mesh were exported as a USD, and the tyflow snow particles were exported as an alembic sequence (houdini particles) out of tyflow, and brought into Nvidia USD Composer (formerly Nvidia Omniverse Create). Since the alembic sequence only exported particles/animated points - Omniverse rendered them using UsdGeomPoints - which is super fast for meshing particles. This helps reduce the file size a huge amount since you dont have to export the snow particles as meshes out of 3ds Max. Finally, I exported a low res ground plane out of 3ds Max, and imported it into Embergen, and used the ground mesh as a smoke emitter. I added a wind force and then exported the smoke simulation out of EmberGen as a VDB sequence. The VDB sequence was then brought into USD Composer as a Volume, and all I had to do was add a couple lights, materials, a camera, and render it out as an EXR sequence for compositing in After Effects. I'll be releasing a tutorial soon, and will show you how to create this blowing snow simulation using 3ds Max, TyFlow, EmberGen, and Nvidia USD Composer.
For more 3ds Max & TyFlow tutorials, and TyFlow project files, visit:
https://edstudios.ca/
For my 3ds Max, Houdini, TyFlow project files, you can download them here:
/ edstudios