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[Meph]

Hey guys,

I tried my hand at some big shrooms and wierd trees yesterday. Here the first result:
 - Black Cap
 - Nether Cap
 - Goblin Cap
 - Tower Cap
 - Tunnel Tube
 - Fungiwood
 - Bloodthorn
 - Sporetree



And a full view of the tree types:









As you can see they all have a unique trunk at base level, which helps to keep them easily apart. The shadows on ground level are placeholders, outlining the general shape of the "leaves", but don't represent the actual size of the tree yet.

Let me know what you think.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Love that Bloodthorn tree and the fungiwood.

The weird shapes and colours will really add to the strangeness of the Underground caves. Look forward to seeing some in-game shots.
Not too sure about the mushrooms yet. But, then, giant mushrooms right? What else are they going to look like?

Talking of shadows, what are your thoughts on where the light is coming from in the caves? Directly above? Glowing mushrooms on the cavern ceiling?
If you really do end up with proper tree shadows, it'll look great outside, but in the caves weird shadows all over the place, while tremendously spooky, will draw more attention to the light issue. (I know light is a long-term development goal, but I guess not something to be added for Steam release).

[voliol]

My thoughts on the trees, in order:

No comment on the black-cap. It looks cool.

The nether cap is too busy with both the veins and the spots. Mushroom spots are generally some kind of protusions, so it’s strange for the veins to go over rather than around them.

The goblin-cap looks great. I would have no criticisms if the prefstring for it wasn’t for its ”stunning color”. It shouldn’t be the most subdued underground tree.

The tower-cap cap is mesmerizing.

Aren’t tunnel tubes hollow? Being tunnel and tubes?

The fungiwood having ”bulbs” is a really fun idea, but currently they look like they’re suspended in the air rather than connected to the tree. Is this intended?

Do the blood thorns need leaves? They don’t have them in the raws, and they look a bit busy.

The spore trees are just as whimsical as I’ve imagined.

Also, how do the mushrooms look when intersected/not looked at from the top z-level?

[Starver]

Shadows: Unless strictly spotlighted from a point directly above, would not realistically be "size of largest horizontal extent", per tree. (If strictly spotlighted from nearer than infinity, it would actually be larger, but general sky-glow would erode that anyway except when clumped.)

So, abstracting rather than full-on ray-tracing, the Z+1 tree profile alone should be sufficient as a shadow-overlay. If you ever wanted to add a half (or third?) intensity of shadow overlay for Z+2, then that would probably be the limit (in my head, quarter/ninth Z+3 shadowing would be chasing diminishing returns), and still work with 'dense' plantations with dappled gaps betwixt trunks at a ground-level.

Self-shading (the non-transparent Z+1 tree-slice bits get (Z+1)+1, etc, shadowing effects) and adjusted shade-gathering on raised landcape/construction within the relevent bits of footprint isn't much more than I'd expect from a quick search for some form of gangway running over a bit of ground one (or two) levels above and casting a diffuse footprint.

(I forget if you're time-of-day shading slope-faces... I don't think you currently are, for simplicity (and virtual irrelevence in Fort mode... not sure about Adv Mode, though) but some typically gnomic adjustment of shdow offset could (approximately) follow the sun in external scenes, I suppose, and hue-shifting to approximate sun-elevation. But underground (and maybe aboveground under rainclouds?) would default to the simpler lighting.)



TL;DR; I think cast shadows (brought down from tree features, each time you hit the rendering of a trunk base, if not too keen on continually querying the empty space above Every. Single. Surface...) should be just one or two of the higher layers rerendered as an overlaid shader. In my head (and recalling past fiddlings of my own) this would give results better than the minimum coding effort would suggest.

But might be interesting to compare with a single shadow the size of the (cumulative) extent, for both aesthetics and calculations needed[1] to establish.


[1] foreach layer (base..top) do {foreach element (layer.elements) do {if ( (shadow(element.position)==nul) || (shadow(element.position).type==leaf && (element.type==branch || element.type==trunk)) || (shadow(element.position).type==branch && element.type==trunk) then {shadow(element.position).type=element.type} }

[PatrikLundell]

I really like the fungiwood and spore trees (although I agree with voliol that it looks a bit odd with the fungiwood "nodes" sometimes looking like they're disconnected from the "tree". I'd prefer to have the "thorn" part of the blood thorn emphasized, but won't complain if it ends up like this in the end, as this first iteration looks very good. In comparison, the tunnel tube looks a bit "boring", but it's still suitably distinct from anything else (I'd experiment with a cap that's about half again the size of the "stem" at each top level if I had any artistic ability, but it may well end up just looking stupid, and would require the caps to yield to stems beside them when present [in which case I wouldn't have a gap in between, but actually fuse them]).

The cap set is a bit boring in comparison, but certainly serves the purpose of being distinct color and pattern wise. It might be possible to satisfy the "stunning color" goblin cap pref string by adding weird patterns in a very different color on top of the RAW basic color (but in the skin only, so it wouldn't affect the wood).

[Pillbo]

The fungiwood and sporetree look really cool.