How to realize interactive snow in UE5

you’d still have the Landscape for the collision

If you guys look at how snow deformation is done in UE4 you’ll realize you have everything you need. it’s not a mystery how Black Myth -could be- doing it if they’re actually displacing the meshes (could be a very elaborate POM with PDO, which is what TLOU2 does)

  • The snow deformation only seems to happen on the Landscape. Static Meshes seem unchanged and their snow is only an up-vector blend with no extra thickness. hence Nanite’s limitations are out of the equation
  • Your typical snow deformation procedure is done onto a RenderTarget, which only writes the snow thickness (not the absolute landscape height)
  • Draw your Landscape with Virtual Heightfield Mesh using RVT height
  • On the material pass after the RVT’s are applied, pass the snow thickness RT as extra WPO. it’s the same as UE4 except it goes into WPO instead of Displacement
  • Add enough render subdivisions to the VHM so the snow isn’t low poly. this could kill the VHM performance though