Silent Soldier

We are surrounded by these "silent soldiers", ever vigil, always patient,
constantly ready for battle.  This old friend sits out across the street
from me and although it's the middle of summer, I decided to so a little
winter scene of it using, of course, the natural shaders.

The road, curb, hydrant and mounds are all shaded with the snow shader.  A
kind of sickly grey and believe me, in Winnipeg, the snow gets likes this
along the roads.  The road was surfaced with a start slope of 50 ending at
90, 0 smoothness, diffuse at 80, with a scale of 0.1 meters, and amplitude
of 1.0 and a granulosity of 20.  A slight crumple and a bump map for the
tire track.  The hills were surfaced basically the same with a little more
snow coverage and a start slope of 30 (basically I just played with it until
a thin layer covered the entire surface).  The curb was surfaced similar to
the road with a crumple texture a bit larger than the road to imitate smow
that has piled up along the edges of the curb.  The hydrant has a start
slope of 0 and an end slope of 28 to create that "spotty" look, as though
clumps of snow were sticking to it but not covering it completely.  A
smoothness of -50 added to the "clumpy" feel of the snow and a scale of 0.01
meters with an amplitude of 3.0 and a granulosity of 20 finished the effect.

The hydrant is also covered is a fairly realistic rust pattern but
unfortunately the snow shader liked the same spots as the rust and covered
it up.

The water at the base of the hydrant was given a reflectivity from 10 -60%
and a transparency from 10-100%.  Colour filter was turned on to allow the
snow shader under the water to show through.  Wavelets at 0.1 meters with
bumps at 5.0 and a bump scale of 0.001 finishes off the surface.  I wanted
the water and snow to kind of mix in a chilly, brrr - that looks cold, kind
of look.  I tried using some crumple and ripple textures but just wasn't
satisfied with the effect so I dropped them completely and let the water
shader stand on its own.

The water dripping from the hydrant and through the crack in the curb are
both HyperVoxels applied to simple strings of points.