Unreal Engine 4 – Snow Material with Tessellation

So after my previous post on creating a snow material, I decided to immediately continue with it and implement the tessellation. The tutorial I was following isn’t complete in terms of showing how to implement the tessellation realistically, which meant I was going to have to do some of it on my own, which is good as it has taught me a little bit how the material editor works.

The following screen shot shows a few assets from the Unreal Engine 4 with the material applied. You can also see the different levels of snow, as well as the tessellation and different textures. The way the material works is, once the snow amount reaches a certain number, in this case 2, the tessellation begins. Increasing the snow amount also increases the tessellation, and is best used with a subtle amount of tessellation as that provides the most realistic look. In the video, you can see what happens with the tessellation when the snow amount is increased. Also, you may notice that the snow only appears on the top of the object, rather than like before where it was appearing on the sides also.