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Autumn tree study
The background
Wandering around Regalia it is impossible not to notice a few special trees with foliage of unusual colours. This is achieved thanks to Massivecraft's resource pack assigning special colours to some biomes.
^Trees with yellow foliage at the Ithanian district.
^A tree with some yellow foliage at the left next to a very uncommon tree from Merrith's apothecary.
^ Some kind of dark vines at the sewers.
Then I saw some beautiful trees in Jorrhild and thought... why are we only using the main colour of one biome? why are gradients not being used?
^Some endermen chilling out next to some trees with colour gradients.
The transition between biomes produces leaves that are shades of the main colours of each biome. The use of gradients may help to produce beautiful realistic trees. At the end I found out that there are both advantages and difficulties related with the usage of gradients but let me explain my experiment first.
The exercise
I tried to create an autumn tree with gradients of green and leaves that are turning yellow, orange and red. From what I have seen, trees keep green leaves next to the trunk and turn yellow or red at the distal part. I tried to emulate this by having the centre of the tree in a river biome that is surrounded by ice plains and extreme hills biome. The resulting tree is here:
Conclusions
Creating the tree was relatively easy but creating small biome areas with world painter was a little cumbersome (but perhaps that is just me being inexperienced). I can imagine that this problem would be further increased if the build staff had to modify the biomes of a map with the pressure of knowing that while they do so, the server is down. A second problem is that the limit between biomes makes the grass look ugly. I dealt with this problem by replacing the ground with a mixture of dirt, gravel and mossy cobblestone but it generates a barren impression. Having done this I can see why gradients in trees are not so commonly used.
Still, for very special trees this may be a good option. Perhaps if a Yanar tree is regrown it may have special shades. The problem with grass is one that can be solved by modifying the resource pack. It may be useful to have biomes with the same grass tone but different leaf colours or different shades of one colour. A mixture of biomes in the survival worlds may create interesting locations with varied trees that are painted with a bit of randomness.
What do you think? Do you use the transition between biomes when building in faction worlds? Do you think a larger palette of foliage colours is needed? Feel free to discuss.
Autumn tree study
The background
Wandering around Regalia it is impossible not to notice a few special trees with foliage of unusual colours. This is achieved thanks to Massivecraft's resource pack assigning special colours to some biomes.
^Trees with yellow foliage at the Ithanian district.
^A tree with some yellow foliage at the left next to a very uncommon tree from Merrith's apothecary.
^ Some kind of dark vines at the sewers.
Then I saw some beautiful trees in Jorrhild and thought... why are we only using the main colour of one biome? why are gradients not being used?
^Some endermen chilling out next to some trees with colour gradients.
The transition between biomes produces leaves that are shades of the main colours of each biome. The use of gradients may help to produce beautiful realistic trees. At the end I found out that there are both advantages and difficulties related with the usage of gradients but let me explain my experiment first.
The exercise
I tried to create an autumn tree with gradients of green and leaves that are turning yellow, orange and red. From what I have seen, trees keep green leaves next to the trunk and turn yellow or red at the distal part. I tried to emulate this by having the centre of the tree in a river biome that is surrounded by ice plains and extreme hills biome. The resulting tree is here:
Conclusions
Creating the tree was relatively easy but creating small biome areas with world painter was a little cumbersome (but perhaps that is just me being inexperienced). I can imagine that this problem would be further increased if the build staff had to modify the biomes of a map with the pressure of knowing that while they do so, the server is down. A second problem is that the limit between biomes makes the grass look ugly. I dealt with this problem by replacing the ground with a mixture of dirt, gravel and mossy cobblestone but it generates a barren impression. Having done this I can see why gradients in trees are not so commonly used.
Still, for very special trees this may be a good option. Perhaps if a Yanar tree is regrown it may have special shades. The problem with grass is one that can be solved by modifying the resource pack. It may be useful to have biomes with the same grass tone but different leaf colours or different shades of one colour. A mixture of biomes in the survival worlds may create interesting locations with varied trees that are painted with a bit of randomness.
What do you think? Do you use the transition between biomes when building in faction worlds? Do you think a larger palette of foliage colours is needed? Feel free to discuss.
