WHITESTONE of Tal'dorei (CriticalRole)

[Mouse]

Hmmm.... reducing the size of the texture has also reduced the overall 'treeishness' of it. I'm not quite sure why that is, but its still pretty horrible.

What you need are some good quality top view tree brushes and a bit of patience to stamp them around in various very slightly different shades of green (remembering to leave small gaps between them all), followed by a drop shadow on the new tree layer to create a broken canopy.

Here's a screen shot of what I mean.

Forest demo.jpg

When you are making a landscape its best to start from the ground up, so you start with the dirt, add the grass, then the bushes, and finally the trees. In this crude example I skipped the dirt and the bushes and started with a decent grass texture 'Just add Bison' (one of the textures in my texture album here) and a tree brush of my own making. At this kind of scale, however, a decent sponge brush would work just as well.

[Zenon]

The trees do still look a bit wonky. You could try fiddling with some overlays, filters, or changing the color.

However, one thing which definitely makes the trees look a bit out of place is the context. Those textured trees are very dissimilar to the solid ground. You may want to add some more 'groundness' first before working on the trees.

Or, if you want a less textured style for your final product, you could take back some of the 'treeness'.

But try and get the 'groundness' and 'treeness' to a similar level

[XCali]

Hmmm.... reducing the size of the texture has also reduced the overall 'treeishness' of it. I'm not quite sure why that is, but its still pretty horrible.

What you need are some good quality top view tree brushes and a bit of patience to stamp them around in various very slightly different shades of green (remembering to leave small gaps between them all), followed by a drop shadow on the new tree layer to create a broken canopy.

Here's a screen shot of what I mean.

Forest demo.jpg

When you are making a landscape its best to start from the ground up, so you start with the dirt, add the grass, then the bushes, and finally the trees. In this crude example I skipped the dirt and the bushes and started with a decent grass texture 'Just add Bison' (one of the textures in my texture album here) and a tree brush of my own making. At this kind of scale, however, a decent sponge brush would work just as well.

Horrible? Wow... and here I was thinking the texture was coming together nicely.

Though, I am NOT yet on a place where I want to give up on the collective forest before I resort to individual trees. Other people get it right all over the place.

(The treeness might just be the contrass and the way I painted it. But, I'll work at it to get it right.)

[XCali]

The trees do still look a bit wonky. You could try fiddling with some overlays, filters, or changing the color.

However, one thing which definitely makes the trees look a bit out of place is the context. Those textured trees are very dissimilar to the solid ground. You may want to add some more 'groundness' first before working on the trees.

Or, if you want a less textured style for your final product, you could take back some of the 'treeness'.

But try and get the 'groundness' and 'treeness' to a similar level

True. I was planning to tackle the ground as I go. Problem that might arise. If my ground is too complex, the simple buildings might not work. But, I'll see what happens, thanks.

[Mouse]

Oh Sorry XCali!

I didn't mean to offend you or anything, I just didn't think you would appreciate it if I continued to beat about the bush and not really say what I thought and meant - for fear of offending you.

Maybe 'horrible' was going a bit too far, since that is a personal opinion that I should have kept to myself. However, It is clear to me that the tree texture just isn't working no matter what size it is. Maybe if you point us to the examples you keep talking about we can start to make more helpful suggestions?

[XCali]

Oh Sorry XCali!

I didn't mean to offend you or anything, I just didn't think you would appreciate it if I continued to beat about the bush and not really say what I thought and meant - for fear of offending you.

Maybe 'horrible' was going a bit too far, since that is a personal opinion that I should have kept to myself. However, It is clear to me that the tree texture just isn't working no matter what size it is. Maybe if you point us to the examples you keep talking about we can start to make more helpful suggestions?

I prefer straight up. True. But, positive criticism beats negative criticism any day.

About the texture I might differ there. Frankly speaking, I see promise in the texture. I could be super lazy and take a selection and pop a plain green in there as trees but I'm not. I'm trying to create a texture that represents trees without having to plop down hundreds of individual trees. (I'm use to doing that. Yet, I wish to try this. No offence. )

Anyway, I am determined. Sorry that I differ in this instance.

(The examples? SO many regional maps have NO individual trees. So I don't know how to explain it better right now.)

[QED42]

If you want to try an alternative for the forest regions can I suggest having a look at Arsheesh's tutorial "Photo-Realistic Forests in GIMP" in this thread. I've only run through it once but it gave some pretty good results in the test version I did.

[XCali]

Okay. Took a bit of thinking it through, but I think I got the forests in a much better place. So let me know if it is better?
It has the same base texture, with two layers in low opacity and overlay above it.

Also, I touched up the ground A BIT. Not much.

I do, however, would like some feedback on my expansion idea that veers off from the original map, but gives an idea that there were farms used in the story when they retook Whitestone.

### Latest WIP ###
Whitestone_Reboot_byOmri.jpeg

[XCali]

This is the seamless texture. It took a bit of tweaking to get it this way. But it works for me.

TopDownForest_1500_Medium_Seamless.jpeg

[XCali]

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