Minecraft Middle Earth is a Minecraft community that recreates the world described by JRR Tolkien and his writings. Everyone can participate in organized events in which we collaborate to create major landmarks, terrain, caves, castles, towns, farms and more.
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I think our hedges around fields are still far too uniform. They look like hedges in a park or garden. Hedges around fields are usually quite natural and hardly maintained (except cutting back to prevent them from growing on the fields) I think something like this would fit much better:
I agree on what you said, but I think the contrast in your example is too big. With which I mean: the trees are immediately 3-5 times higher than the smaller bushes. I would have smaller trees sticking out of the hedges. Maybe the most common found in hedges (for their resistance to pruning mainly) is the hornbeam, which I took as one of the examples when I did hedges. Others (less common, but more variation) can be yew, hazel, holly. For taller trees you can best use oak, ash or willow (not weeping willow). I've never seen cypresses or birches in hedges tho ^^
Too realise our goal of finishing Belfalas we need to make some final concepts. These concepts will be used as an example when foreman will be running jobs in Belfalas in the near future. So what we ask of all of you that want to participate is: Helping us create the final concepts of the Belfalas vegetation.
What can you personally do to help?
I have created plots where one can have a go at your personal concept for the Belfalas terrain. These plots can be found at /warp Belfalasvegatation. You can claim your plot by typing your name that is in front of the plot. Your concept has to be suffice to the following rules:
Everything made in your plot must be made by hand
You have to look at the example pictures BELOW and keep to this style.
Use the Gondor Resource Pack 2, the same one that is used in DA. (this include all the new tree and leaves textures)
Plotbuild possibility #1:Forrest vegatation
When participating in this part of the plotbuild, try to make something like the pictures shown below.
@RubenPieterMark has taken control over the Belfalastreeplot (warp Belfalastreeplot). All the trees and bushes that have been build and are deemed acceptable will be placed in our Belfalas Tree Plot.
Plotbuild possibility #2: Open grass areas and undergrowth for trees.
When participating in this part of the plotbuild, try to make something like the pictures shown below.
In medieval times forests were intensly used by people, e.g. feeding pigs or growing building materials, these forrests had no or very little undergrows
I don't say we should make all forests without undergrowth but just those near settlements. Some gound concepts for such a forest would be great.
For sheep I would like to have some very open grass lands like this:
But also areas with some solitary trees, and small groups of trees for more variation. So far our grasslands are quite uniform: Solitary trees and flower placed everywhere in the same way.
I finally got to do a concept. I've finished one with shrubland. I used a very easy effective inspiration: Wikipedia has a list of ecoregions by country, and of all ecoregions in Europe. For the shrubland I went to Ecoregions of Metropolitan France and chose the Garrigue ecoregion. Using these ecoregions is very easy and effective, because Wikipedia offers a description or a list with the plants and trees which grow there and some images. Imo this requires less thinkwork than figuring something out that looks realistic based on your own imagination.
For the first inspiration pictures taken by Eriol, I saw some similarities with the ecoregions of Serbia. The latitudes are similar and they're both quite close to the sea. For the valleys and lower areas we could follow the ecoregion Balkan mixed forests and for the higher mountains on the west side of Belfalasthe ecoregion Dinaric Mountains mixed forests. Why specifically the western part of Belfalas? Middle-earth is just like our world, so western winds are dominant (because of the rotation of the world yadiya...) so in the western part of Belfalas ocean winds are dominant and thus with orthographic lifts the area is wet af. Wikipedia says that the ecoregion Dinaric Mountains is extremely humid, so that fits well. For the eastern part of Belfalas mountains, away from the ocean winds, the ecoregion Rodope montane mixed forests fits better. It's less humid than the Dinaric Mts.
Sounds very over-complicated, but it's simple and helpful. It just requires a bit of thinking about which ecoregion would fit where, once that's done you're set. Maybe future terraforming projects could give this method a try?
The concept looks great!
I have just one issue with the concept. All Garrigue regions I have visited were either much more densly overgrown with bushes (more humid areas) or had far less grass (more arid areas).
I agree that Belfalas should be quite humid. So I would prefere more dense bushes and plants. Also I dislike the yellowish color of the grass very much. Belafas should be very green due to the high humidity. I still like the concept of @Lindo at the small island west of Dol Amroth very much.
I don't really see that the climate in eastern Belfalas could differ much from western parts. It's only 200 km from west to east and there are no high mountains that could block off rain and cause an abrupt change of humidity.
I thought I'd give this a shot aswel. I was somewhat looking at what Eriol said about more green and humid terrain with more bushes, although I must say I didn't do much (if any) research for this. I looked at pictures of shrubby terrain and pretty much went with that.
Looks great, but still not as overgrown and dense as I imagined.
Have you every been in a humid wilderness terrain. In my experience it's very hard to get through the tangled bushes. But ofc there will be very few real wilderness in Belfalas. Most areas are intensely used. Your concept would be great for areas where trees have been felled some time ago.