I thought I'd post a quick image of my WIP on the northern section of the map, The Ruhks. I've been dragging my heels over doing this as it's such a large expanse of forest and I had zero fun doing the other deciduous forests (for some reason the coniferous ones were a lot easier, probably because I am happier with my brushes on those.)...
Anyway, as the area is so large, I decided to use the method I described in the mini-tut I posted here quite a while ago to hopefully save some time and also so I can rattle off forests quick as a flash on other maps should I ever need them.
So in the spirit of this being a WIP I thought I'd show a beginning and after shot so it can hopefully be seen how effective this can be.
In this first shot you can see my initial rough placement of the multi-tree brushes (a little too rough as I've noticed the brush at the far top-right is placed slightly over the one next to it - ah well, I'll fix it tomorrow :S) . I've also gone over two of the labels as I intend to move these to suit, my aim is to have them left clear of forest for maximum legibility like in the label "Colden Wood" which can be seen on the last few images posted.
You can see that I have mostly left the outside "lugs" of the brush free of the shadowing pattern I am using between the trees. This is for three reasons...
1): I don't have to be quite as precise in placing the brush (but more precise than I have been top-right.
2): because I've placed some small trees over the inner corners of their "lugs" to aid variance the shadow occasionally crosses over them. It is slight and barely noticeable unless you are specifically looking for it but it was bugging me.
3) As my shadows are going to the left and bottom, not all the trees, specifically those on the right and top, would need shadowing around them. This isn't a problem on this large brush and in the middle of a forest but it would need taking in to account when doing the edge of a forest where some part of the brush would remain unhidden by the masking passes done with the single tree brushes.
This lack of shadows on the outside of the brush makes it obvious where the jigsaw fits together but a quick pass of my pattern stamp et voila!
Much more difficult to spot the join. The edges of the brush are varied enough so there aren't too many spots of trees all in a line. Of course, with no shadow included this wouldn't even be a problem at all.
It's still obvious where the brushes are due to the shape and size of the brush I used but the next thing I will do is make another two brushes, one roughly half the size of my current one and then another one that is even smaller. After that I will need to go along any edges left with single tree brushes and mask the remaining straight edges.
I'll post more images of the process once I've done the rest and I'm thinking that if I can get the brushes in a fit state then I'll upload those too in case anyone can use them.
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