Let's share our hate of forests

[Mouse]

Hey thomrey

Would it work to do a small patch of trees (or several varying small patches to use in combination), where the trees each individually had their own white background, but the rest was transparent so as not to hide other features? that might disappear between the trees?

It would be half way between drawing them and creating an actual texture... but I can do that for you if you like? A repeating texture that you could presumably trim to size and tidy up around the edges?

I would need you to draw a patch of trees, then I could work with Genetica or Krita to create a seamless texture of a reasonable size, so that redundancy wouldn't be a problem.

EDIT: If you wanted to make a seamless texture of your own that you could just trim to size all by yourself, Krita has an outstanding ability to tile an image. It will even draw the texture 'live' for you on screen in real time - drawing all the copies right across the infinite grid as you draw your single tree, and allowing you to draw trees that overlap the edges - repeating the relevant part on the opposite side of the canvas.

[Wired]

I've got a question about the trees. In post 35 I mentioned the difficulty I encountered with individual trees. I followed Tonnichiwa's advice and went on the internet to search for a method to do so and came back empty handed.

Here's my problem :
Attachment 90772

Using a brush I have an overlapping problem, I'm forced to copy and paste the same tree (30 000 + times on the last map and one more is coming ...).

Can someone help me ? I've seen many maps with many trees without overlap, there has to be a solution, a tutorial somewhere.

Seeing as I had/have the same issue I'd be very much interested in a solution there, too!

[ThomasR]

Thanks a lot for the offer Mouse. I know what you mean and I did it already but I choose not to continue with it as I wanted to get a more organic feeling close to the first style I used (see post 37). So, no texture. You mentioning Krita might be a good idea. I dunno how it works but I'll check if one can do bicolor brushes with that software.

@ Wired : we're gonna find a solution I'm sure of it

[Mouse]

I don't know very much about Krita either, except that the secret key to hit if you're working in Krita is the W key. It toggles from image to infinite tiling field. The things you draw on just the image alone before hitting W don't tile, but the things you draw after you hit the W key do tile - and most impressively too

I drew this with the W 'on' watching as the lines I drew across the joins replicated themselves on the other side of the canvas. Hitting W again toggles it back to the normal image

Before W.JPG

Hit W and you see the complete texture...

After W.JPG

This is a fairly low res tile (1024 pi). There are templates for tiles in excess of 4000 pi, and you can create your own even larger than that - up to the limitations of the system. You can turn any image into a tiling image by just hitting W


EDIT: Its also a very good demonstration of the hand tremor I have! LOL!

If you want to have a go its free here

[ThomasR]

I've cast a summon spell, let's wait and see if the gods are with us ...

[Mouse]

Makes drawing rivers a synch

I've put a link in for anyone wanting to go that way with Krita

[ChickPea]

There is the program TreeThing developed by Ramah a while back. I remember using it once or twice when I first started out. You can create your own brushes to make it a little more unique to you, but after that, it's super easy to generate forests.

Probably not the solution for every map, but it's a useful little app and fun to play about with.

[Wired]

There is the program TreeThing developed by Ramah a while back. I remember using it once or twice when I first started out. You can create your own brushes to make it a little more unique to you, but after that, it's super easy to generate forests.

Probably not the solution for every map, but it's a useful little app and fun to play about with.

I remember that one, though I never really found my way into it.

[ChickPea]

I haven't used it for a long time, but I did use it on this map nearly two years ago. It's probably not the greatest advert for it (I'd only been mapping 3 or 4 months when I did that) and I think I used the default brushes, but with a bit of playing around you might get some nicer results with your own brushes.

[Gamerprinter]

It depends on the program you are using to paint custom brushes. Although I don't use custom brushes much in my maps, Xara Designer Pro x11, the program I use to create all my maps, I can create custom brushes if I want to, and I can set the distance apart between placement of brush icons - even forcibly causing them to overlap. This is not the case for all software. Additionally, some brushes may be transparent lineart drawings, and overlapping them will cause both brush elements to be represented such that overlapping doesn't hide the tree beneath a tree placed above it. The brush would have to be solid white (or other solid color) allowing for overlapping to hide brush elements placed beneath other brush elements. There is no single method of brush functionality, nor brush stylistic feature common to all programs. You'd have to determine which software you are using, what your specific needs are to discover whether it's even possible. What may work perfectly fine in Photoshop for example may be completely inappropriate using a different software package.

Just so you know, I mention at the start of this post that my software allows for brush placement of trees, however, I chose to never use a custom brush when I create my forests. I generally create about a dozen to up to 20 individual trees, then manually build groups of different trees in some naturally appearing layout of forest. I then select ungrouped groups of trees and copy/paste them throughout the area I want them to exist. If too many groups appear identical and in close proximity, I subtract, move or add more trees to make each group appear more naturally placed. I often place trees in a group of over 100 individual trees in my copy/paste action of placing them.

To me placing 30,000 trees one-at-a-time through the movement of my mouse/stylus through the use of a custom brush is less efficient than placing multiple groups of 100 to 1000 trees. For me, my way of placing trees is much faster than dragging random placement from a single mouse stroke such as how custom brush painting works.