Guild of Writers

For one of my ages I need to make a really good looking pine forest. Unfortunately I'm not quite sure how one goes about making good trees. Also where abouts can I get a good texture for the foliage? I've never really made trees in Blender before.

The main person I would recommend in this area would be Kierra, she's made some very good looking trees, and is trying something no Cyan Age has, a forrest for real!

The trees in Relto are quite pine-looking and could be interesting to study. Just import Relto and have a look at all those trees.
It may not be exactly what you're after but it's a good starting point.

Trees are made in 2 parts. The trunk and branches, and the foilage. Trunk and branches are modeled, while the foiliage is usually a 2d facer plane with a png of the foiliage combined with an alphamap to make everything eccept the leaves/needles transperant.

Hm, Ive been thinking for some time of sharing some of my textures I've been using, but with the new plug ins I've been struggling to make them look nice again.

This is the one I've been using for a pine trees:



You're welcome to use it.

It works nice as a billboard

~Kia

Thanks Ill give it a go

But Kierra, your beautiful tree is surely a deciduous tree?
As Aloys says, The Relto tree may not be true pine tree, but it is evergreen:

The trees in Relto actually look more like Douglas Fir trees. Somewhere in the relto files if you dig for it, the file is called Ponderosa Pine, I think...? But it actually looks more like a Douglas Fir tree. You'd think being PNW natives Cyan would know the difference between pines and firs, LOL.

The texture I gave was a true pine, also an evergreen.

Ponderosa pine

Douglas Fir (look at the branches especially)

Now, if you're looking for a douglas fir texture, let me know if you find it. I've been looking for one quite some time. Cedar too. The only fir and cedars I've found have been too cartoonish. *sigh* I have one cedar that I'm working with, but its not as good as I'd like it.

~Kia

Well, at least you didn't hit me over the head with, 'Pseudotsuga'. I had a friend in Oregon who couldn't wait to throw in the Latin names of everything from Fir trees to ground worms.

But Kierra, why does your very pine shaped tree -- with its really nice scaley pine bark -- not have needles on it?

Go outside and look at it. I'll bet your tree is out there dropping its leaves at this very second. Or do you have it in the parlour -- trying to make it think that its not winter?

Because to put it quite plainly, the texture sucks LOL. deciduous tree textures are hard to find! Thats the best I could find, and I'm still not that happy with it. But it passes as a reasonable facsimile for people that don't know what true pines look like

No worries, I wont bash you about the head with latin names...I don't know them myself.

But I can throw around the word "conifer" like nobody's business

~Kia