Snowfall Animation

Around the holidays, we were feeling festive so we decided to utilize that 3D ODOT logo I generated and create a nice snowfall background slate for the digital signage program around the state. Ultimately, we didn’t get a chance to put it into circulation as the technology couldn’t support a moving background image, but it was still a fun project to be a part of.

I utilized particle creation and textures in Maya to get the snow build-up effect on the logo itself. It was a fairly awesome learning experience and I got to see an entire part of Maya that I didn’t really know about. The snowfall was done in After Effects. I placed three layers in 3D space at various depths in front of and behind a still render of the ODOT logo. I blurred the depths accordingly and adjusted the particle size, frequency and lifespan to create this.

My favorite part that probably won’t come through on the video is that this is actually a looping animation meant to play continuously. It was challenging to create, but it was a pretty nice payoff, even if it wasn’t used like we wanted.