Background trees

[Rita]

Hello everyone!

Could you please tell me how to create a forest of flat trees on the background?

[Agame78]

Hello! I made some just a few days ago like this:

-create a plane and resize it. 15 for Y and 60 for X was good for me.

-then just add a texture on it, you can find the path just looking on what the normal trees use.

-and there you have a few trees, keep duplicating the plane to make larger groups, put them behind of each other and so on. Set the clip distance to at least 800-1000.

Maybe theres a better way to do it, i'm currently working on my second map ever and still figuring out things on my own.

In the image: normal trees and 2d "faketrees" using the same texture.

[WrinkleysRule]

Unfortunately that method only works properly in FS22 (which is what you are doing  with GE 9.0.6).

The background tree set up in FS25 is totally different, as it uses a different shader (backgroundTreesShader.xml) for the seasonal and leaf growth effects.

[Rita]

Guys, I understand the background is just a decoration, 👻 but maybe someone could write a little script that would take the LODs of the trees🌲 and a PNG file with the planting locations marked, and create a forest. Similar to how we create a forest on a map. Maybe we could temporarily convert the background to a rigid body or so. I just don't know how to write anything in lua yet. 🤷‍♂️

I know a polite word PLEASE! ❤️😄

[Agame78]

10 hours ago, WrinkleysRule said:

Unfortunately that method only works properly in FS22 (which is what you are doing  with GE 9.0.6).

The background tree set up in FS25 is totally different, as it uses a different shader (backgroundTreesShader.xml) for the seasonal and leaf growth effects.

Yes, i'm working on FS22. It uses a shader called treeBillboardShader.xml which does the same trick i believe (?) (Im using spruces which do not drop their leaves so i ignored the shader.)

Now I added it to my trees and noticed that it makes the plane rotate towards you as you move so the trees wont become invisible from certain angle.

[Rita]

Well, to be honest, I don't need any seasonal changes. I want to create a taiga, and it's mostly spruce and pine trees. 😀 And the rest of the trees can be green, too; no one even notices them. As long as they're there. Right now, I only have board trees, and then an ice rink. 😂

[WrinkleysRule]

You could simply just use the ingame trees LOD1 and place that on the border.

 

[Rita]

Yes, but I need thousands of them.

I tried to use sets of background trees from the standard maps, but they don't suit my hills at all. 😄 And they cause collision errors. 

I don't know, maybe it's possible to somehow make the background part of terrain and then draw a forest on it using mesh paint mode or some other method? 🤔

[WrinkleysRule]

That number of trees will probably cause perfomance issues. what you could do to minimise the number of trees is use the treescape images used in some maps (Calmsden for example) for the furthest trees and LOD1 trees for the nearest.

Or create your own treescape images.

Out of curiosity how have you created your backround mesh ??