I was asked by
@SugarKoala If i was interested in helping design a forest for the southern hilltop on Rivendell so after fixing the terrain from being haphazardly voxelled, I laid out said plan.
One thing I've always thought the Rivendell Revamp needed was a plan, and a unified one by parties involved. Now obviously I went about this on my own accord but I guess it could serve as a guide for any future public project.
The Rivendell Revamp - Forest
Tolkein, while writing his novels based this area on Lauterbrunnental, Switzerland. It is a fantasy location, like all of Middle-Earth, but grounded in reality. Therefore this forest plan follows the vegetation native to Switzerland.
Picture of Lauterbrunnental;
Take note of the trees, it is nearly 100% Evergreen, with very little Deciduous (oaks, beeches, hornbeams, etc). And as such, this guide follows that.
The most frequent form of trees in this area are; Swiss Pines, European Pines, European Larches, and Hornbeams.
Examples of these trees;
Swiss Pines;
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Swiss Pine Sapling;
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European Pines;
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European Pine Sapling;
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European Hornbeams;
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European Hornbeam Sapling;
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All images above should be used as templates for all the trees placed on the Southern Hilltop of Rivendell. Also take note that the trees are the same species with each picture, but they sometimes look radically different, this needs to be reflected in the final trees built on the Hilltop.
All images above are unneeded as the trees are going to be stenciled in then edited further to look more original.
I'm not going to dictate specifically which tree needs to look like what by showing you a screenshot of a minecraft tree. Each one should be open to interpretation, this leads to a happy workforce and creativity that would otherwise not be seen on the server.
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When you arrive at the Southern Hilltop you will see a guide of where and how to build these trees. Each tree should be different than the other, copy/pasting leads to obvious repetition even with the //rotate command.
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This is the template you will see, which marks where each tree will be built. The tree bark and leaf type are already on top of each marker.
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Image no longer needed, trees are stenciled in now.
These are the boxes for each tree type. Each tree should fit within these boxes and not extend beyond them, this is to ensure consistency and prevent the forest from looking too crowded once completed.
The guidelines are:
Swiss / European pines - No higher than 15 blocks, and no wider than 10x10
Swiss / European pine saplings - No higher than 9 blocks, and no wider than 5x5
Hornbeams - No higher than 20 blocks, and no wider than 15x15
Hornbeam saplings - No higher than 10 blocks, and no wider than 10x10
Bushes - No higher than 3 blocks, no wider than 5x5
Above text unneeded, trees are stenciled now.
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The reason for these heights are to remain in scale of the map; which is roughly around 1:90 or 1:100 scale. According to a botany source found while researching the trees for this area, I saw that the majority of Evergreen pines in this area range from 15m - 45m tall.
This would make the ideal tree sizes for Rivendell to be around 3 - 15 blocks tall.
To stay in scale with the map I would suggest not going over 15 blocks for a tree, that way they seem to be part of the terrain rather than an object sitting on it that is 33% larger than it should be.
A look of the hilltop and forest planned so far;
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Image no longer needed, trees were pasted in via stencil.
Happy foresting
-Phe