In the end though, we found that the time spent authoring textures like this didn't really pay off so we stopped using the feature.
Instead of that, we blend randomly between a few different material versions that make up the ground which leads to a similar but easier to achieve effect. An obvious example is here http://web.poecdn.com/image/xboxbeta/ss/Panel1/screenshot3.j... where we have a snowy and non-snowy version of the same ground texture and we scatter blends to the snowy version randomly.
Aside: I played through PoE co-op with my fiancee after it was first released, and I really loved it. I'm really happy you guys were able to build such a big ambitious game and make it work financially.
I played PoE back in summer and autumn 2012, in closed beta, and I absolutely loved the game. I even spent some money on it :-) Then my gaming PC died. Nowadays I only play games on PS4. I just noticed that an Xbox1 version was released a few months back: are there any plans of ever bringing PoE to PS4? I would love to play it again, but can’t rationalise getting either a gaming PC or an Xbox to do so.
We even wrote an article about authoring textures using the technique here: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/55091
In the end though, we found that the time spent authoring textures like this didn't really pay off so we stopped using the feature.
Instead of that, we blend randomly between a few different material versions that make up the ground which leads to a similar but easier to achieve effect. An obvious example is here http://web.poecdn.com/image/xboxbeta/ss/Panel1/screenshot3.j... where we have a snowy and non-snowy version of the same ground texture and we scatter blends to the snowy version randomly.