Winter Wonderland: How to Create Realistic Snowfall in After Effects

Unfortunately, Mother Nature is kind of a bitch when it comes to giving filmmakers the weather they want when they want it, which means that if you're insistent on having snowfall in your films, you need to find a way to fake it. Of course, you can always go the practical effects route and have a few grips rain fake snow down upon your actors - instant mashed potatoes work well if you're on a tight budget. Or you can do it all in post with some nifty VFX work. Grueling as that may sound, it's actually fairly easy to accomplish. Here's PremiumBeat's Kevin Gater to show you how.

As Gater mentions in the video, in order to pull off this effect with these exact results you're going to need a Red Giant plugin called Trapcode Particular, which is one of the more advanced and trusted particle generator plugins for After Effects. Unfortunately, the full version of Particular comes in at $400 - less for students and people who are upgrading - which means that unless you're content just playing around with the trial version for a little while, you're going to be out a bit of cash. With that said, Particular is capable of producing some spectacular and naturalistic particle effects (as can be seen in the above tutorial), so it's definitely a worthwhile investment for some people.

Luckily, you don't necessarily need Trapcode Particular to make realistic snow inside of After Effects, although it certainly helps. Using the program's built-in particle effects - "CC Particle World" to be more specific - you can create some varied snowfall effects. Here's a tutorial from Ryan Talbot that shows you how to create snow using After Effects' built in tools:

So there you have it, a few different ways to create snow inside of After Effects. Do you guys have any preferred methods or tips for creating snow, whether it's digitally or practically? Let us know in the comments!

Source: PremiumBeat