Editor: Doing Forests
by Auratus

There are many ways to do forests other than random spray and speckle. Those forest can turn out nice, so don't get me wrong. The way to do an aesthetically nice looking forest is to limit the number of objects as combinations to something like 6 or less. In the case of forests: 2 large objects (tree types), 1 or 2 medium, the rest small (flowers, mushrooms, etc). You may with to also add building stone pillars (use auto generation, smallest pen size) into your forest. If so, place these with room for trees in between them.. before you do the forest. Also, adding Desert Shrubs (limited) can add a hint of nice brown color to your forest, giving it an "aged" look. The same applies to adding limited bark (small or medium) to your forest; just be careful about changing the contrast too much by adding too much bark.

Here are just few possible combinations, but there are many, many more:

One mountains (thinner, leave room for mines):

(a) White poplar and Burch trees with white flowers. Add a limited amount of mint in crevices, but out of the shadows.

(b) Fur and Spruce trees with pink flowers. Add magnolia trees and/or cranberry bushes carefully, but pink flowers should be separate from the cranberry bushes in order to avoid a contrast color clash (my opinion). Add a grass (like mint), limited.

(c) Pines tree types alone or with other smaller objects: white or pink flowers or white/purple flowers. Add a grass (like mint), limited. Cranberries look nice with pines also (instead of flowers).

(d) Pines mix well with 1 or 2 other trees types.. try it until you find a good combination. White flowers nearly always provide a nice contrast to green in any forest. Example: Pines and Spruce/Fir and cranberries (limited) OR (not AND) white flowers (or Trojan magic herbs). Sometimes cranberries and white flowers can mix well in this kind of forest... just experiment. Add a limited amount of grass graphics like Mint.

On Green terrain (Grass or Grassy), thicker than on mountains:

(a) My favorite: Olives trees and Coconut trees, magnolia trees (limited), porcini mushrooms (or normal mushrooms), white flowers (or while/purple flowers or Trojan herbs). Be carefully mixing flowers, or the look of this kind of forest can be ruined by the excessive contrast and look too busy. Add Mint (and/or other grass objects in a limited way). Sometimes cranberry bushes look good in this kind of forest if your are careful with mixing (or not) with the flowers.

(b) Fur and Spruce trees, magnolia trees (limited), desert shrubs (limited), white flowers (or cranberry bushes or white/purple flowers); maybe porcini mushrooms; limited grass (like Mint or Hart's Tongue Ferns) help.