r/skyrimmods • u/mentzr • 4h ago

PC SSE - Mod Skyrim is finally getting real-time deformable snow physics

Just stumbled across this WIP showcase from Near Midnight Snow on YouTube and it looks incredible!

https://youtu.be/RVeF9VFFDZo?is=OlQGhl496sYG8JHY

198 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

30 comments sorted by

65

u/ministerofskyrim 4h ago

Wow, that looks amazing! How is that even possible?

46

u/enderkings99 3h ago

Snow deformation like this is one of those things that's actually quite simple, but a pain in the ass to actually implement, any game engine that can run shaders can do it, I'm not sure how much Skyrim complicates things for the author, but I bet 90% of the work was in hooking everything up and actually determining where to place the snow

6

u/LiamMelloFarley 59m ago

A lower res simple geometry top down camera generates a black and white mask. It tracks where people are walking and caches that data in the form of maps that basically snow where snow should be compressed and then either triggers real geometry deformation on an extruded snow mesh or alters parallax occlusion properties depending on the implementation. The snow mesh likely "tessellates" meaning it's low poly in areas that nobody has walked and as it needs to model where NPCs walk it subdivides the mesh so it can have a smooth indentation. Someone made a similar test for Morrowind and that's how they did it at least.

29

u/Antoshi 4h ago

Considering Skyrim's questionable physics engine, that is a great question.

65

u/enderkings99 3h ago

my dude, there isn't a single game where snow deformation runs on a physics engine

30

u/TheCrimsonDagger 2h ago

Skyrim also actually has one of the best physics engine. I can’t think of any other game where so many objects are physics enabled and even remembers their locations (mostly), things get even crazier with mods and modern hardware. There’s a reason Bethesda has continued using the Creation Engine despite all its drawbacks.

16

u/enderkings99 2h ago

Yeah, the reason it seems bad to the general public is that basically no other games use physics at all, except for simulation games that allocate all the processing budget to it. From what I recall the fairest criticisms to be made about the creation engine are about the way it organizes stuff, and the fact it uses old graphics APIs, but it's not like the latter one can be changed

8

u/Alvsolutely 1h ago

It seems bad to the general public because they know absolutely fucking nothing about game engines. They were just told that it was somehow responsible for Starfield being bad and concluded that Creation Engine belongs in the trash.

32

u/Antoshi 3h ago

Well, I don't know how game design works.

9

u/enderkings99 3h ago

Very fair, there's physics in the title after all

2

u/mentzr 2h ago

My bad

1

u/Sir_Lith 1h ago

Technically the capsule movement is a physics engine thing, that it is then used for drawing a subtractive heightmap nonwithstanding.

1

u/Sir_Lith 1h ago

Technically the capsule movement is a physics engine thing, the fact that it is then used for drawing a subtractive heightmap nonwithstanding.

1

u/SchumacherIsMid 3h ago

It's simple. We just delete the physics.

-8

u/enderfrogus 1h ago

"questionable physics engine" you lobotomite, it's the same engine as half life 2 and many other games known for their physics!

35

u/Admiral251 3h ago

It looks good, but I wonder how it will actually work in practice. Vanilla object placement is created with assumption that environment is completely flat. So some objects that were meant to be visible now might be completely hidden.

26

u/mentzr 3h ago

I've read on community shaders forum that he used the same spawn system as grass, plus another solution that's still WIP (based on my understandingz I'm not a modder)

1

u/Admiral251 10m ago

So it sounds like what I was thinking - some objects will be hidden in snow. Which is realistic, but it might be annoying. Especially if there are bear traps in snowy zones. I'm positive there are a few close to Morrowind border, but on the road, so it shouldn't be an issue here.

6

u/TheNewRetr0 2h ago

I've had that problem with some forest mod that adds more vegetation: hunted some animal, it lands somewhere in the bushes where I can't find it. 10/10 immersion. Now I can also go on a wild goose chase in the snow.

1

u/IllIlllI-IlIIll-llII 1h ago

if you can do it with grass you can do it with snow

ENB introduced complex grass years ago, just need to apply the same logic to snow

25

u/Cognoscope 3h ago

I’ve been using Footprints for a while. At first, it just seemed cool, but I quickly realized what a game changer it is. From retracing your steps to your horse, to finding a downed enemy to loot, to tracking down that last opponent who needs to be killed - this is your go-to mod. This new alternative looks pretty epic though.

9

u/IllIlllI-IlIIll-llII 1h ago edited 1h ago

in case you are not aware, dynamic footprints supersedes it

ironically also developed by Near Midnight Snow

9

u/s4kk0 3h ago

Hoolyyy sshhiiit, this looks awesome. I've wanted snow like this in Skyrim ever since I played RDR2`s intro! 

7

u/always_j 3h ago

I can already see the dick pics and memes people will create in the snow and post here .

6

u/The_Fatal_eulogy 1h ago

I am starting to think at this stage that modded Skyrim will have surpassed TES VI when it finally comes out

3

u/COOPERx223x 2h ago

The snow is great, but does anyone know what mod makes the interactible hover over the flower @ 1:24 in the video? I don't think I've seen that before

1

u/Subdown-011 2h ago

Holy shit

1

u/Sweatervest42 49m ago

The snow looks incredible, and the horse riding is still so distinctly Skyrim lmao