Here goes - I have a few palms in my archives, but not nearly enough! While I'm in the forest, I'll try to get you the Oenocarpus and Bactris barks - the latter is more a coating of fine spines. The first in this series is Ceroxylon (Wax palm), followed by Phoenix canariensis (Canary Island Date). I thought I had more in my archives, but obviously not! Fear not, though, I'll collect more next time I'm downslope.
thanks :) most important for me is the coconut pal bark very :) the more pics I have the better of it i dunno why but I really cant find any decent picture of barks on internet , no close up like thepicture I posted at high res no lightining etc ... looking foward for it :) ...
That's the new and I gueess final canopy of the tree arrangement as you said it to be more tall and more spread .... http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/8121/wirekapok.jpg
Thankyou , but after looking how looks ingame I think looks poor , I have now to redo , I will try a different approach , eventually manually draw more shaped trees to fill in a more rich branch density and scatter more leaves ,remake the branches too , and also make over the higher poly branches directly the low poly so that I have more control on the distant models form ,this is getting still more time but I plan to make in a modular way so I make branches that I canreuse and rearrange later , I have now to look for more pictures of the canopy to get a better performance / distribution shape .... http://img697.imageshack.us/img697/379/35125389.jpg Meanwhile I wait hopefull for the textures :) ....
Ok befoure remaking the canopy and the trees , wich I will in order to get also a bette rplacement of branches and have also the low poly version premade there , I tried this experiment by just doubling the branches on the tree , that's the effect , the polycount just reached 4072 tris , so is this still acceptable for a big tree ? lods would be like 2200 - 1100 - 550 - 301 billboard or sprite ..... better? http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/5139/kapoktree.jpg Also shouldthe kapok tree have lianas pending from it? how about rampants and vines climbing ?I seem to understand that the huge woudlnt have much stuff but may be the smaller ones liek the big and not giant type would some moss or the like?
Here is a possible setup for tthe different tree height types from Huge to young withrelative heights and shape of leaves and branches distribution what you think? I was thinking eventually to use 3 type of barks , the unspiked smoother and striated one for the big and huge , the spiky one for all rest apart the young wich would get a smooth and greenish bark .... all would share the same leaves .. also I guess I could add lianas on all and just on the big to the medium the ivys.... What you think? http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/5139/kapoktree.jpg
And after a lot of work here is finally the ingame version completed with all the maps etc , I hope looks good , what you think? This is the Huge version , the other versions should be portrayed in the previouse picture .... In those pictures you can see the Bark of the Huge one , I went for a smoothed but with striatures horizontals , then the LEaves are around the size of a human hand and sparse scattered like a star system branching , then the trunk is pretty straight and just ath the very top it spreads in almoust horizontal and bit on vertical , to have a sort of flat fungus shape ..... From top to bottom , couple of pictures of the roots in shadow and on lightning , the canopy from the bottom , the Detail of the leaves and the silouette among other trees .... http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/4775/ceibapentandra.jpg
That looks fantastic, Naima! I'm off to the jungles likely next weekend (the end of May) and I hope to have some textures for you when I get back from that. Do you also need Musa textures and shapes?
Whatever you can , My priorities woul dbe Like : Ground texture picture for the rainforest , ( no leaves , terrain at certain distance like 1 m from ground and area more or less of 2x2m , sme stones inside terrain and partially out and some few roots also in the terrain or the like anyway some of those picture stuff woudl work then I can make out of them one texture , the larger details will be added like 3d stuff after , like leaves and bigger stones or roots or wood etc...) Palm cocos nucifera bark Palm cocos nucifera palm leaves , green and rotten Musa paradisiaca ( banano if not wrong) rotten leaves trunk and leaves almoust all pictures shoul be taken overcast day , no shadows , or direct lightnings mostly vertical and possibly no distortions with good distance resolution ratio ... Well of course just if you caj I will be more than happy with some rough stuff either I don't want to disturb you that are already so gentle .... apart from those main ones then everything else you think fitting woul dbe fine :) .... Btw the giant kapok does have lianas pending from tops? I wasnt sure and I saved some polygons for them if or not to add and eventually if I shoul dadd some rampant ivy palants on some parts...
They do, but the lianas are much finer than you'll see in most photos. You should also look at bromeliads and their structures, since they're found in the upper branches.
Ok I woul davoid the bromeliads tough at those high rises unless are trees that the people can get closer to see so I save polys I will do some bromeliads may be on closer tres heights ....
Another option would be to perhaps allow your players access to the canopy by way of vine walkways - if there was an ancient culture on the island they would likey have left some sort of similar infrastructure in the canopy anyhow....
Exactly what I was thinking but , this would require more direct hand work inthe editor , this tree for now is a base to be scattered around procedurarly according to some density parameters on the area, the specific culture hang on trees stuff will have to be placed manually so I was thinking to eventually make suspension bromeliads and vine bridges to be placed after manually .... in meanwhile I guess I ll add some vines to the three and some lianas , then pass to make couple of variations and then the big version... Also is there any particular grass in tropical areas? like tall grass or short grass? grassfields with flowers r do not exhist such a flowers of fields ?
Grasses in the tropics.... Hmmm. This is challenging, because generally at lower altitudes in the tropics, vegetation tends to run wild, and this is not an ideal condition for grasses in the sense you're talking about. Bamboo is the most common representative of the Poaceae (grass family) in most tropical situations, especially those untouched by humans. However, as you go up in altitude, the conditions that favour the type of grass you're thinking of start to develop. The only thing is, the tropics do this weirdly too - see below. There are grass plains in Brazil (the Cerrado) and in the altiplanos and pampas of Chile and Argentina (which are more desertlike), but I'm not sure that's quite what you're going for. If this is your higher-altitude area, I could get you some pictures of the grassland paramos of Ecuador - this is large puffs of Cortaderia (pampas grass) and in between is very low-growing vegetation, more like moss than grass really, except in a few locations where there is also Paramo bluegrass. The flowers tend to be small and yellow - Calceolaria being a good example - except for the Frailejones, which are a characteristic of Ecuadorean and Colombian high-altitude meadows. Some of the paramo grasslands also have "trees" of a sort - Polylepis, which are quite interesting and normally encountered individually or in small groves.
I mean for small open areas free of trees , something like : http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1318/1447763494_fa0bcf8290.jpg?v=0 http://pixdaus.com/pics/12517453015afaq1z.jpg http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jensenl/visuals/album/2008/kauai/IMG_3199.jpg Oh and the AMbient is a Tropical Island Probably placed either in the Caribbean area or Pacific South , the All around vegetation should be like Tropical Island all around , getting more into the center core of the Island Jungle and finaly Rainforest in center , the most "humid" area full of rivers waterfalls and lakes ..... http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/5035/lasarenasmap.jpg
I'm off this weekend - there's a volcano erupting in my area and it's disrupted everything, my own plans included. I'll be going to the northern jungles instead of the close ones, and that takes a bit more planning because I can't just come home in the evening. Sorry about that!
Ok I remade the shape and leaves arrangement , hod does it looks now what shoudl I change fix in the shape? 3226 polys on the high poly m the lods has less of course.... Shoudl I increade more the density etc? any change to make it finally perfect ? I have still to add : Lianas Details on Trunk texture some Trunk ground level Ivy
Looks really great to me. One little thing, though, in the structure of your buttresses. At the moment, they're base 4, and they should be base 5 - Ceiba trees generally do things in multiples of 5.
you mean x 5 roots? I think I made actually more than x 5 , or I many not have understood well what you mean , anyway right now I am remaking a bit more smooth the buttroots and also add some color vertex meaning I am making moire evident the in and out parts and dirth more brown green the bottom parts... Also make another variant with more open wide branch areas on top and filled of vegwetation more on very top ....
Remade again the shape to get amore natural look I hope , also working on a secondary shape to make variation ... http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/1963/newkapoks.jpg
