In this tutorial i would like to present simple and quick way to generate snow using 3DSMax particles system. All you need is some tree like thise below:


Once you have one select your tree, go to Editable Mesh in Selection window enable Ignore backfacing

From the top of the scene select all polygons ignoring bottom side is the place where particles will ganerate snow.



Now create particles go to particle systems and pick PArray


Set all parameters like shown bellow :) be careful choose object-based emitter at the end - any change might takes long time to update, make sure that yours tree is about 3,3 meters notice that particle size is 0,022m if you make it in wrong size it might affect in owergrowed or to small generated mesh


Create Mesher


Pick Object PArray


And wait antile it finish calculate, in my scene it take about 6h :) I know it's a lot! You can optimize this by decresing numbers of particle and changing coarseness to bigger but you will loss accuracy.

In place where you hed mesher should appear your snow. Mesh looks a little beat angular, use Relax to make it more smooth
Now drag mesh on to the tree and its ready :)
I recommend to practice on some small pices with smaller particle quantity to cam up with better result.

Final result


You can find scene with snow effect here