How's my forest and what can I do to make it more lively or forestry?

Is there anything I could add, I know the new Roblox grass moves but is there anything I could add that could make it even more lively or make it look more forestry?


Came back home and started to put ideas together,
Here is what I came up with.


I made up a small area in the map putting ideas together, I will definitely try to make the forest denser, on the other hand there is another tree type you can see but I don’t have that many tree type of meshes that are similar together. I updated the lighting to be more realistic from what google maps showed of that area and I added some more variety of plants to it. I will try to add more and to keep updated as to help other people who may be seeking help with forestry.

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It’s a very good forest, but I’d say add a zone of trees really close to each-other so if you reach that area you almost feel lost, and it also gives the vibe of a forest. Maybe have a few trees with no leaves in them? Just to signify that they could’ve been cut down, or something related.

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Yeah I agree, I know of that idea its only the fact the map i’m currently building is huge and I fear these trees may start to lag the game but also with the stumps and no trees are a good idea.

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I wouldn’t really call it a forest. The tree density isn’t high enough for it to be a forest. I suggest adding some more vegetation and fauna to it. Maybe throw in some colors here and there to make it less monotonous too.

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There is more dense areas I just picked this one out in particular as you can see all the features in the forest. On the other-hand I can try finding other contrasting plants to throw in as color.

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rocks, bushes, moss, closer trees, big variation in tree sizes. you can look at some good references:

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I 100% agree! If you want to obtain the perfect forest, Make more trees like, in a group, close together. Then, Your forest will look amazing! :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the replies, I hopefully can show some improvement later on.

I would add some more realistic lighting, I made a tutorial on how to create a really cool woodland/forest lighting setup How to make your lighting more realistic in shadowmap It should be able to take your build to the next level :grin:

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If we start with something like this, there are a few things you can do

  1. Vary the height of terrain
  2. Vary terrain textures
  3. Increase tree density
  4. Mess with lighting
  5. Add more tree variants

Start:

Varied height:
I like to vary height by building a large parts in slopes, and then add more variance using the grow and erode tools.

Varying height is one of your most powerful tools, and is almost completely performance free! :smiley:

Vary terrain texture! This is also relatively free, and breaks up the landscape effectively.

Increase tree density! This one can have big performance impacts. If you’re looking to save, using a non-pine tree model tends to use less parts overall.

Careful with performance implications here, but remember Roblox caches models together so you can have a lot of duplicated models and it’ll sort of be ok. Test on low-end devices.

Repeating this cycle, especially in varying terrain height can help a lot.

I like to add cute little rocks made out of terrain, it’s really easy to plop a few of these in really fast.

I’m a big fan of bumping brightness, saturation, and contrast, and then mess with lighting a bit.

Adding some variance to the trees and plants puts in a good final touch! Obviously this fake grass flower stuff is pretty expensive, but I like it. Depends on your user for this map!

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Very nice forest, but maybe add bigger rocks?

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I’m using mesh parts which are usually not as intensive as the ones you are using so its easier for myself to add more trees, its just the size of the map is huge and there’s a lot of space that will need to be covered.

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I think it’s missing a river going through it and mountains. Maybe throw in a cave too? I’m not really sure whats wrong but I just feel like the forest is too empty.

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The trees are a bit to spaced out, maybe add some close together to make it feel like your kind of lost that sort of vibe. Otherwise great job

It doesn’t have the feel of a forest, it looks too synthesized. It lacks variation. It lacks environmental hazards(uneven ground, etc) like what forests have. It’s uncanny, the trees look realistic, but they don’t look like they belong there. It gives me feelings of unease, if this is for a horror map then you did great!

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This is so beautiful! It really shows that you have put some much effort onto making this forest. However, I should suggest that maybe you could add more trees. Maybe put them together at a close distance so it could give more of an amazon forest vibe. This is optional since your forest is already fantastic!

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If the size of the map is huge and there needs to be alot of trees, you can probably (maybe) utilize LOD (Level of Detail). Basically, don’t render things far away like trees/rocks/flowers/etc. Render near the fullest when nearby of course. And if its midway through, just render half of the amount that is there. If you want to make it stronger though not look weird due to random objects appearing out of nowhere, you can add fog/fade the objects as you get closer to them.

That way, you can have alot of trees around the large map without sacrificing too much performance and detail at the same time.

Also, if the trees are somewhat at the same elevation/same group/same style, group them in blender and export that way as 1 mesh itself to essentially “group” them together. This may or may not help performance but its better to try than not try (you can probably test this by grouping them into 1 spot and walking nearby them to see which one causes more lag :man_shrugging:)

Also, 1 more thing, I have a post that actually talks about the possible performance problems you could fix to speed up your game so…

Learning what actually cause game performance issues - #3 by 3rdhoan123

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Yeah I already use Level of Detail, its just mainly the buildings and stuff are high quality and use large amounts of triangles per building, as well as the map being linear instead of a large square map more of a rectangle, as this may cause lag which the buildings are kind of already causing performance issues with many of them close by its just that if rendered with some trees for the people who use quality on max may cause lag. Still I will take a look into the performance link you sent and i’ll see what I can do from there.

1 Like