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Forest Update released! Yay!
I think now it's time to discuss forest trees!
Toti and the texturer team gave uns incredible possibilities. But we still have to develop styles and techniques to use them to build realistic trees. So here are my thoughts:
Trees are living plants! Trivial? Yes, but no! When looking at our exsiting forests at the MCME map this has not really been taken into account. Why do trees have leaves? They do photosynthesis to transform light energy into chemical energy. This means that it doesn't make any sense for a tree to grow leaves at spots with little light. Why is this important for us? It makes trees growing in a forest completely differntly shaped than solitary trees growing in the middle of some meadow.
Solitary Trees: They get light from all directions. The blue sky and white clouds scatter a lot of sunlight. Thus a solitary tree has leaves all around from top close to the ground with little differences in direction (north, south, west, east). Solitary trees usually have full closed canopies of small branches and leaves:
Forest Trees: They compete with each other for light. Their only way to get more light is to grow higher than the other trees around. There is almost no light from the sides compared to light from the top. Thus forest trees have very long trunks or few stron steep branches with relatively small side branches and leaves except at the very top of the tree where most light is found:
Yes, both pictures show beeches. They are trees of the same kind with completly different shapes!
Now when walking through a forest at the MCME map all trees I see are shaped like solitary trees. The small trees I made 2015 in Lothlorien are no exception
and the new forest example at plotworld also consists of mostly solitary shaped trees:
I really think we should start making realistic forest trees!
There are of course many different types of forests. There are forest close to villages which in history were economically used for growing construction wood, for feeding pigs and goats, for hunting and so on.... These forests typically had little undergrowth.
And there are anchient woodlands far off any human settlements. These forests have abundant undergrowth, fallen and rotting trees, trees of all size:
I think we should carefully plan where to build which type of forest (or which gradual mixture of both types). The Numenoreans were reknown to cultivate forests for shipbuilding surely in Gondor there is something left of this great past. But surely therea are also inaccessible ancient woodlands in Gondor's mountain valleys and steep hillsides.
When buiding a city, village or farmland we usually try to find some pictures inspiration for styles and think a lot about realism and credibility. We should give our forests the same attention!
I think now it's time to discuss forest trees!
Toti and the texturer team gave uns incredible possibilities. But we still have to develop styles and techniques to use them to build realistic trees. So here are my thoughts:
Trees are living plants! Trivial? Yes, but no! When looking at our exsiting forests at the MCME map this has not really been taken into account. Why do trees have leaves? They do photosynthesis to transform light energy into chemical energy. This means that it doesn't make any sense for a tree to grow leaves at spots with little light. Why is this important for us? It makes trees growing in a forest completely differntly shaped than solitary trees growing in the middle of some meadow.
Solitary Trees: They get light from all directions. The blue sky and white clouds scatter a lot of sunlight. Thus a solitary tree has leaves all around from top close to the ground with little differences in direction (north, south, west, east). Solitary trees usually have full closed canopies of small branches and leaves:
Forest Trees: They compete with each other for light. Their only way to get more light is to grow higher than the other trees around. There is almost no light from the sides compared to light from the top. Thus forest trees have very long trunks or few stron steep branches with relatively small side branches and leaves except at the very top of the tree where most light is found:
Yes, both pictures show beeches. They are trees of the same kind with completly different shapes!
Now when walking through a forest at the MCME map all trees I see are shaped like solitary trees. The small trees I made 2015 in Lothlorien are no exception
and the new forest example at plotworld also consists of mostly solitary shaped trees:I really think we should start making realistic forest trees!
There are of course many different types of forests. There are forest close to villages which in history were economically used for growing construction wood, for feeding pigs and goats, for hunting and so on.... These forests typically had little undergrowth.
And there are anchient woodlands far off any human settlements. These forests have abundant undergrowth, fallen and rotting trees, trees of all size:
I think we should carefully plan where to build which type of forest (or which gradual mixture of both types). The Numenoreans were reknown to cultivate forests for shipbuilding surely in Gondor there is something left of this great past. But surely therea are also inaccessible ancient woodlands in Gondor's mountain valleys and steep hillsides.
When buiding a city, village or farmland we usually try to find some pictures inspiration for styles and think a lot about realism and credibility. We should give our forests the same attention!