[WIP] Cresty's West Gash landscaping

First and third locations are the best.
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IMHO, this tree looks better when located around stone or in arroyo, it doesn't looks as good when it's standing alone on plain.

Nice job Cresty!! West Gash is really coming into its own with the new flora

It would be great to have some red-rock "grass" (stone debris with it).

I think this video could be additional inspiration for you.

This just keeps getting better and better! :)

Dancing forest :)

The only thing which I can suggest it is add more variety to distance between trees. Just to avoid of impression uniformly distributed trees like in an orchard.

I'm not sure if it's primarily your placement of the trees, it may just be the models themselves. Have you thought about resizing them to add variety to their heights using the "s" key? I think that might help break up the uniform "orchard" look as I think this is partially derived from the fact they look like they all spouted the same year.

edit: btw looking better and better :) I looked at some of the first photos of your work, and boy has this gone a long way already.

Yeah, this looks a bit too much like an orchard indeed, and too much like a forest as well. I would make trees grow in bunches of 4 - 5, with a lot of size variety - especially smaller ones. West Gash isn't fertile enough to support too many large trees.

The dry ravines on last two screenshots look awesome though! Very much what a transitional area between Ashlands and West Gash should look like.

Nice landscapes. i wonder if it's possible to make this small trees/bushes to have leaves of Vita's big drooping trees?
There is no small ones of same species, is'nt it?
Btw, this bushes can be formed in much more dense, wall-like formations, like here:

HERE

to make hide island horizon and so to make it visully bigger.
 

Hmmm, idk if it is next stage but adding some smaller rocks will help to fill barren ground IMHO.

Hi, I'm new to this forum but have been following the project for a while. I just wanted to make a suggestion here. I think the landscaping is beautiful, but there still seems to be some discussion about what to do with the mid-West Gash. Can I suggest a badlands topography?

Badlands occur when streams erode rapidly down and back into loose rock in a dry environment. They create dramatic, winding, steep-sided gullies and ravines, which make for the perfectly claustrophobic environment where you always feel a bandit attack is around the next corner. From the pictures below I think it's clear how they could lead from a canyon-dominated environment to a more open south Gash terrain.

Geomorphologically I think they make sense, as if weaker shales existed beneath the calciferous sandstone of the canyons then the slightly arid, vegetation-sparse West Gash climate is perfect for badlands topography.

Finally I don't think it would require any more assets necessarily - the topography could be created using just morphing of the terrain, with boulders thrown in to the ravine bottoms.

Just an idea, I also thought Roman's concept was beautiful.

Some links to badlands pictures:

http://www.contemporarynomad.com/wp-content/gallery/badlands/badlands-national-park-1.jpg

http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/655/cache/sunrise-badlands-park_65570_990x742.jpg

http://www.donsmaps.com/images6/badlands7305.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/HellsHalfAcre.JPG

we have something like this already, where west gash meets ashlands

Looking real nice CC!

That's the best that you can make with such assets. You could add some interactive stuff in such wilderness (plundered traders, dead animals, graves on roadside, cult places, buildings' leftovers).
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Trees are great, small bushes have too complex coloration of leaves for perception (would be great to make leaves monotonous, with only several complex-colored leaves). Dry ferns looks excess on this screens.

Try to raise landscape in several places (or put some objects) to have different paths to get on those long ledges, otherwise killing NPCs will become a trivial task of jumping on them and shooting while NPCs take a long route around to get to you since they can't jump.

alysander

Trees are great, small bushes have too complex coloration of leaves for perception (would be great to make leaves monotonous, with only several complex-colored leaves). Dry ferns looks excess on this screens.

*SLAP!*

Oh, i hope it isn't looks like a slap. That was a praise mostly.
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Flora is awesome, but trees leaves texture is much more awesomier, than bush's texture.
 

Double slap, the flora is awesome!

Aren't the bush assets straight up from Skyrim? They make me think of the Rift. That'd be the only thing that would feel kind of off to me about them, they seem a bit too "normal" compared to Vita's surreal trees. But oh well, might not be worth making new assets.

It is cool. The only thing which I suggest is adding more sediments (higher ground level) near cliffs in some places (like in real life you have more ground in valleys than in peaks). First thing is that these slopes will look like more like in MW. Other thing is they looks less repetitive then. Also creating some clusters of flora could be useful too. Vita's trees really well works together so you can create even variation of "one" tree made of several examples with different sizes. The same with bushes.

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Hmm I'm just curious how it will work with graphics overhauled like that. I mean better lighting and more dense grass

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I was thinking if I can provide more diverse ground texture here. But I don't know guidelines. This is sth which can be added in anytime, without too much effort.

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Keep it up!

Yeah, Lukkar's right, the bottoms of the cliffs could really, really use some sand/mud slopes. Like this: [External image]

There's always piles of rubble, mud, sand and small rocks on the bottom of every cliff. They fall off from the wall (that's how cliffs form after all), and then accomodate on the bottom. I think it's the last thing that makes these cliffs look unnatural and "RTS'y", couldn't put my finger to it before, but now it's pretty apparent.

Would assets for such piles of rubble be difficult to make? They could be kept relatively simple.

That's all right with flora's density for sure.
Desertous biome can't maintan tall grasses or too much bushes/trees.
However, it would be balanced idea to add dead trees/bushes.

I have some photos of same landscape elements and ground. I wonder if someone can use it.
https://yadi.sk/d/GvYCekEqicy5u

EXAMPLE

*edit* I'm a tool.

Crestycomb

I'd love to do even denser flora, but I have to think about performance as well. After most of the regions are done, we can compare performance and see what places can get extra details, and what places need to cut down on them.

It sounds it will be versions for high-end and low performance computers which even makes sense. Probably at the end most ppl will use the last one due to technological advance since Skyrim premiere.

Raising the land to be sloped at the bottom and applying a rock texture is the easy way to get the desired effect without running into repetitive asset hell. Also, scripts could be added to add/remove references but it would have to be tested to make sure it doesn't screw things up.

Very good Cresty, you will be rewarded some day.

I'm carious how much more you can add flora (tiny grass) until it will be unstable :D

this is looking too cool

awesome:)

Looks awesome Cresty, Good job.

I'm carious if it is possible (if it is not too much work) to rip off dead trees that we can have some recourses for fallen logs, branches...