Elsweyr Trees

[morcroft]

TOYB asked me to see if I could produce a SpeedTree suitable for the savannah and semi-desert areas of Elsweyr. Several false starts later, here is the first version of Acacia tortilis, the Umbrella Thorn: staple of African location shoots since the dawn of cinema.





It's not quite as flat topped as I'd like, but I don't think I can get it any better. It still needs better bark and a billboard; and I need to improve it's behaviour in the wind. Apart from that it's pretty close.

From memory, it's about 12000 triangles - which is pretty steep, but SpeedTree polies are handled better than statics and in any case these should be spread thinly.

[The Old Ye Bard]

Oh that is a down right sexy tree, excellent job morcroft!

Could you perhaps make 3-4 variants of the tree? (Just minor variations, maybe one smaller/younger tree).

[morcroft]

That was the plan. Actually, as far as I can work out, Oblivion sort-of supports the speedtree seed values to give differently shaped trees, but the automatic substitution is broken: you have to create a separate formID for each. They share the same model, textures and billboard, but look different.

And yes, I also plan to do a younger tree - which should actually be easier, as acacia tortilis is more rounded when young.

[The Old Ye Bard]

Originally posted by morcroft
That was the plan. Actually, as far as I can work out, Oblivion sort-of supports the speedtree seed values to give differently shaped trees, but the automatic substitution is broken: you have to create a separate formID for each. They share the same model, textures and billboard, but look different.

And yes, I also plan to do a younger tree - which should actually be easier, as acacia tortilis is more rounded when young.

Excellent! The trees will look great, and will present a good gameplay feature aswell, given Npcs and creatures would use the trees as shade (and provides the possibility of random objects under the trees, left-over items from travelers' campsites).

[morcroft]

Hadn't thought about that but you're right - isolated single or small clumps of trees should really stand out in the open savannah.

Speaking of shade - I don't know if speedtrees really cast any shade on the ground - they're supposed to self-shade, and there's a setting in the CS for shadow radius but I'm not convinced I'm getting that to work either.

Anyway - when it comes to it, I guess we should vertex shade the ground and maybe switch to a "no grass" texture to give the right effect.

[The Old Ye Bard]

Originally posted by morcroft
Hadn't thought about that but you're right - isolated single or small clumps of trees should really stand out in the open savannah.

Speaking of shade - I don't know if speedtrees really cast any shade on the ground - they're supposed to self-shade, and there's a setting in the CS for shadow radius but I'm not convinced I'm getting that to work either.

Anyway - when it comes to it, I guess we should vertex shade the ground and maybe switch to a "no grass" texture to give the right effect.

Oh speedtrees do cast shadows, a special type of shadow that's render differntly do others ('canopy' shadows, you can turn it on and off in settings). Looks pretty cool, and I beleive it happens automatically. Modders would vertex shade around the tree anyway though, as is standard with any tree.

Anyhow, here's alittle something I did in photoshop:

[morcroft]

Oh yes - found it and turned it on, and I turned on HDR lighting as well. You'll have to bear with me: I've just reinstalled after one mod stomped on another and stuffed the whole game! I've now taken the pledge: nothing goes in unless its omodded first!

Anyway - since you like the atmosphere shots I took these while I was at it :





The shadow's just visible in the first thumbnail. I haven't actually set the size in the CS so it's just the default - probably linked to the swamp cypress I started with - but it's definitely there.

[The Old Ye Bard]

Oh those screenshots are gorgeous! :goodjob: and just imagine them with the rest of Elsweyr in the background!

[morcroft]

I've added models of two younger trees to the Acacia set, and I'll supply the lot soon. In the meantime, I couldn't resist adding to the atmosphere screenies. I snagged a copy of Shewter's Merchant Tent set so I used one to replace a vanilla tent I used before.
Shewter - the tents would be a little easier to place if they had longer legs and pegs: if the ground's not completely flat the guy ropes tend to get buried. I think it looks fab though - and really makes the scene uniquely Elsweyrian. I kept the little A-frame tent: I figure they'd be ubiquitous.
I'd also put a wooden stool in my original campsite - but that just doesn't make sense: who's going to lug one of those around the savannah? So I've made a folding stool which I think fits rather nicely.
Anyway - here's the piccies.

[The Old Ye Bard]

The words 'holy shit' and 'bloody amazing' spring to mind, those scenes are fantastically Elsweyrian to a point I don't think we've acheived yet in the mod (we've got lots of fantastic assets, but nothing has actually been utilised so well).

I love the folding stool, they match Shewter's tents perfectly :goodjob:

It's amazing, but with the assets in that shot, and with stock assets at our disposal, we could effectively make about 20-30% of Elsweyr's Wilderness already (though ee could do with a few small savannah scrub bushes, but isn't completly essential as we could reuse stock bushes for this).

Areas we still need more trees for, would be upland prairies around Riverhold, and where it meets Cyrodilic Forrests (looking more like this, then into this, the later using more stock trees), scrubby areas comming off the savannah/badland regions, as a way to blend into the rainforests of the south (like this, to this), and then moving onto the more tropical rainforests of the south, but I think we may have assets for this already.

Another area we need more assets is for the badlands/canyon areas, however that's more in the sense of rocks, etc rather than trees.