I`m attempting to model an area of the rocky mountains that has lots of trees and I`d like some advice on how to do my forests. Not so much how to place them but where. As far as I know if I put trees all over the mountains in a thick forest it would slow down my frame rates so I`m wondering how to make it look good and appear thick but not bog things down. I`m thinking if I have the trees only 3 or 4 deep on the lower part for closer up and then have a forest texture for the upper part I might be able to pull it off but I don`t know if I can somewhat blend the 2 together. One problem is I`m modeling Kicking Horse Pass and the track zig zags up one of the mountains so I think I`d have to use trees not texture between the tracks of the zig zagging part. If I put a forest texture under some trees will it make the forest appear thicker than it really is? The real mountains have trees on the slopes almost all the way to the top so it shouldn`t be hard to make it look good if your looking straight at it level but I`d like it to look ok If you`re looking down at it from an angle. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, I don`t have much experience doing large mountain forests.
Advice on trees
- Thread starter rjw1975
- Start date
cascaderailroad
New member
Very cool route. I have all the maps from Frazer to Lake Louise and included the Spiral Tunnels.
I have seen alot of routes that use various ground textures, that give a distant hazy smoky mountains effect, ie: fading from green, to blue, to purple. And only right near the tracks, that is the only placement of trees.
Trees and buildings come dead last for me, my route is barren, until I get all the track curves and gradients finalized.
At one time or another ALL of Pennsylvanias trees were clear-cutted, and severe erosion took place. Many areas topsoil are so poor, that only scruffy trees resembling Gum trees exist today. All the old growth forest is gone forever ... I have many photos of the Altoona-Horsehoe Curve that show it just a barren hillside of stumps.
My advice: Never pet the sweaty things
I have seen alot of routes that use various ground textures, that give a distant hazy smoky mountains effect, ie: fading from green, to blue, to purple. And only right near the tracks, that is the only placement of trees.
Trees and buildings come dead last for me, my route is barren, until I get all the track curves and gradients finalized.
At one time or another ALL of Pennsylvanias trees were clear-cutted, and severe erosion took place. Many areas topsoil are so poor, that only scruffy trees resembling Gum trees exist today. All the old growth forest is gone forever ... I have many photos of the Altoona-Horsehoe Curve that show it just a barren hillside of stumps.
My advice: Never pet the sweaty things
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Driver_Col
Active member
My preference is to be very strategic with individual trees. i.e. I want the best effect for the minimum memory. This means I always look at the terrain from the train's height which in turn means that:
- I could (e.g.) create a thick forest effect on a gentle rolling terrain by simply planting 2 or 3 rows ensuring that the trees do not line up regularly. If the terrain is more rugged, then the additional height might need more rows however, as rugged may dictate areas of space, then less would be good.
- If I need a varied/mixed tree forest, I decide which trees to mix and that decision is based on colour, texture and tree size. Mother Nature attracts us with a huge range of shades within any colour, and our pc's attract us with limited data processing ability. My compromise is therefore to use only 3 trees.
- Why do I use individual trees? The main reason is that I get to individually position them for best effect, and then adjust the individual height as necessary to create the effect of random growing (even a controlled forest area has trees growing at different rates). It is quite time consuming but the alternative is to use a few runs of spline trees, or "pre-made" groups of trees. I have not had too much success with those.
Finally, as with any route that I make, my golden rule is "If it is out of sight ....keep it extremely simple!" If someone wants to "fly over" my route, then they are going to see many oddities. If, however, they restrict themselves to an approximate train height, then I believe my approach is pretty good. (Ref. TC3 routes Gwladys Ddu (GWR) and Gwladys Ddu (Early BR)
Hope that gives you some ideas.
Regards. Colin.
- I could (e.g.) create a thick forest effect on a gentle rolling terrain by simply planting 2 or 3 rows ensuring that the trees do not line up regularly. If the terrain is more rugged, then the additional height might need more rows however, as rugged may dictate areas of space, then less would be good.
- If I need a varied/mixed tree forest, I decide which trees to mix and that decision is based on colour, texture and tree size. Mother Nature attracts us with a huge range of shades within any colour, and our pc's attract us with limited data processing ability. My compromise is therefore to use only 3 trees.
- Why do I use individual trees? The main reason is that I get to individually position them for best effect, and then adjust the individual height as necessary to create the effect of random growing (even a controlled forest area has trees growing at different rates). It is quite time consuming but the alternative is to use a few runs of spline trees, or "pre-made" groups of trees. I have not had too much success with those.
Finally, as with any route that I make, my golden rule is "If it is out of sight ....keep it extremely simple!" If someone wants to "fly over" my route, then they are going to see many oddities. If, however, they restrict themselves to an approximate train height, then I believe my approach is pretty good. (Ref. TC3 routes Gwladys Ddu (GWR) and Gwladys Ddu (Early BR)
Hope that gives you some ideas.
Regards. Colin.
On East Kentucky 3 I laid out about a 500 meter square area as 'forest' using about a dozen trees and just a couple of ground textures. I chose trees aiming for a not-too-obvious mix. In other words I wanted a homogeneous look without blatant stand-outs, but also a bit of variety. The ground textures were just something blandly shady looking.
I then simply copy/pasted trees wherever there was a visible foreground slope. The foreground areas were then tidied up and the odd feature tree added. Foreground areas were re-textured over the base coat. Looking back over the entire route it took a while to develop a technique, early areas are nowhere near as good as the last bit. I should probably re-do the early areas, but life is too short!
The route was started in TRS04 where the system worked well in Surveyor but the sim struggled in Driver. Moved into 06 for driving tho it was fine. The route was finished in TS2010 where it purrs like a kitten! (Alpha 'billboard' trees in Compatibility Mode, not sure how you would go with this system using 3D trees in Native)
Andy
I then simply copy/pasted trees wherever there was a visible foreground slope. The foreground areas were then tidied up and the odd feature tree added. Foreground areas were re-textured over the base coat. Looking back over the entire route it took a while to develop a technique, early areas are nowhere near as good as the last bit. I should probably re-do the early areas, but life is too short!
The route was started in TRS04 where the system worked well in Surveyor but the sim struggled in Driver. Moved into 06 for driving tho it was fine. The route was finished in TS2010 where it purrs like a kitten! (Alpha 'billboard' trees in Compatibility Mode, not sure how you would go with this system using 3D trees in Native)
Andy
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johnwhelan
Well-known member
I'd be tempted with TS2010 and speedtrees, especially mcguirel's.
Very realistic and speedtree has its own rendering system so it makes very good use of the video card.
Cheerio John
Very realistic and speedtree has its own rendering system so it makes very good use of the video card.
Cheerio John
cascaderailroad
New member
cascaderailroad
New member
I was talking about the technique of using textures, with fewer trees.
I once had a dog, that had no nose !
... How did he smell ?
Awful !:hehe:
I once had a dog, that had no nose !
... How did he smell ?
Awful !:hehe:
Referencing UltraTreez or screenshot?
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johnwhelan
Well-known member
I think the thing I like about the UltraTreez is like the other speedtrees you can see some movement in them. However not too much as some of the speedtrees look as if some one has turned a large fan on and moved it round the tree sometimes.
I can even recognise some of the trees which for me isn't bad.
Since mcguirel is floating around this thread perhaps she can give some guidance about which trees have lowest machine impact and how to use them to best effect.
It used to be that it helped to keep the variety down and rotate the trees so they didn't look identical but with the newer speedtrees I'm not sure what the limits or advice would be.
Cheerio John
I can even recognise some of the trees which for me isn't bad.
Since mcguirel is floating around this thread perhaps she can give some guidance about which trees have lowest machine impact and how to use them to best effect.
It used to be that it helped to keep the variety down and rotate the trees so they didn't look identical but with the newer speedtrees I'm not sure what the limits or advice would be.
Cheerio John
I see nothing in those shots to recommend the practice, but that's just my opinion.
I did some experimenting and I think I can do it with 3 or 4 sort of random rows of trees and a forest background, gras11 looks good if the scale is big but I`ll try the others as well. I`ve picked dmdrake`s generic spruce 2 and white spruce 2 each in 3 different heights. Would I be better off if I just used say 4 of these 6 trees and just adjusted the height down on some of them to give more height variety? I can lower the 20 and 25m ones down 2 meters without the branches dissappearing into the ground. I`m also thinking that for the trees towards the back you wont be able to see the trunks anyway so they could be lowered further so instead of using a separate 15 or 20 m tree I could just lower a 25m one.
mezzoprezzo
Content appreciator
I agree with those who advise using textures for mid and far distance.
Mix textures and individual trees/splines for parts of the route which will be viewed closer to. Use darker textures for shadows under trees.
When using textures for mid to far distance you cannot sensibly use the rotate tool. You need to set the dial so that the texturing shows the trees in the vertical position. Then leave it there.
To overcome the repeat “checkerboard” effect which happens when you don’t rotate, change the scale. Then squirt larger and smaller bursts at random across an already textured area. Do this with some closely matching, but different, tree textures to further break things up. Add a burst of rock and/or grass here and there too.
Different tree textures may need their rotation adjusting to ensure they are vertical. They don’t all lie in the same direction! It’s worth using just one piece of “test” mountain to do the preliminary adjustments and trials, which can be overpainted at the end.
Cheers
Casper
Mix textures and individual trees/splines for parts of the route which will be viewed closer to. Use darker textures for shadows under trees.
When using textures for mid to far distance you cannot sensibly use the rotate tool. You need to set the dial so that the texturing shows the trees in the vertical position. Then leave it there.
To overcome the repeat “checkerboard” effect which happens when you don’t rotate, change the scale. Then squirt larger and smaller bursts at random across an already textured area. Do this with some closely matching, but different, tree textures to further break things up. Add a burst of rock and/or grass here and there too.
Different tree textures may need their rotation adjusting to ensure they are vertical. They don’t all lie in the same direction! It’s worth using just one piece of “test” mountain to do the preliminary adjustments and trials, which can be overpainted at the end.
Cheers
Casper
Ok, thats what I just started experimenting with on a new route, if I want to try new things I just go to start a new route and then just don`t save it when I`m done. The problem with all this is the layout of the track itself, Cascaderailroad will understand exactly what I mean since he`s been modeling the same area. I`m gonna try to explain this the best I can. The track goes along the base of hill #1, across a bridge to hill#2, through a spiral tunnel, back across hill#1 at a higher elevation, through another spiral tunnel and back across hill#1 for a 3rd time at another higher elevation. Above the 3rd pass is not really any problem but the area around the 1st 2 passes will be viewed from both the front and back side. The only thing I can think of to do is to use some trees and a forest texture above the 3rd pass and for the other 2 use a ground texture instead of a forest one and place a couple rows of trees on the downside of the track on the slope to kinda hide the ground texture, which I suppose if the trees did hide it I could use a forest one there too.
My recommendation is 3D SpeedTree / JVC Payware trees no more than 3/4 tile distance from the track area. SpeedTree does infact use the GPU as its rendering choice freeing up CPU Resources whereas JVC Payware uses the CPU as its rendering choice.
Distance vegetation should be no more than 2 types and of a very low poly count billboard UNTIL I get to my UltraTrees Forest Content (this will be very low poly 3d content). Keep in mind that you can design a series of these two billboard trees in a manner whereas limiting the quantity and still have fullness. Creating a texture that simulates the choosen vegetation and also properly scaled can infact really create optimum distance vegetation scenery.
Driver_Col
Active member
Texturing takes some practise but, if I am understanding you correctly, try putting a green texture across a flat open area. Then, using a slightly different green, click on/off quickly while moving your mouse quickly to give a mottled effect. Repeat with another shade of green. From the air, your flat area will probably look strange however, from close to ground level (say train height) it can look extremely convincing with "apparent" undulations.
Once you have mastered that, then try it with your desired landscape!
Hope that helps. Colin.
I`ve actually been doing that for a while now but have only recently discovered the rotate texture tool. Hopefully now I can get good looking results using only 2-3 textures instead of 5-6, since really by using or not using the randomly rotate texture tool and different scales I can get multiple texture looks from just 1 texture.