I was looking for a fun project that I could put together quickly in the UDK, and, since I've kinda turned into the UDK weather guy, I decided I wanted to try making a snowstorm. I saw a time lapse of the poles melting on the BBC's Planet Earth, and I wanted to try that too. So it turned into a a time lapse of winter to summer in the Antarctic.
I put a little thought into the angle of the Earth, distance to the moon, etc, but I mostly based it on artistic preference more than anything else.
Anyways, most of my effort went into the Earth material. If you can't see it in the video, the clouds are animated, with quite a few techniques being used to try to make it look the best possible.
I got a handful of Earth textures from random sites I found on Google, and made my own normal maps, etc. I made pretty much everything in the snow environment, except for the sky material, which comes with the UDK.
Also posted on YouTube with different music (WMG got me).
