Service Road: Biome design

I've been itching to learn more about biome design. At some point, I'll be putting together a test scene for the Production version of the service road -- even if I'm not officially assigned that work, I want to test my ability to polish the previs up to production quality.

Biomes are about creating natural scatter systems that reflect reality. The right plants growing together in realistic patterns. When I start creating half-decent scatters, I'll then learn how to animate them.

Environment notes

The service road is located in a Mediterranean-like location modelled on the biomes found on the Greek islands. Not a wild leap from the setting of the Game Arma 3, which was used to create the film's storyboard.



The following plant life is common to the biome.

Trees

• Olive trees (Olea europaea)
• Cypress trees (Cupressus sempervirens)
• Plane (Plantus)
• Pines (Pinus halepensis, Pinus brutia, Pinus nigra, Pinus pinea, Pinus silvestris, Pinus heldricheii, and Pinus peuce)

Also, deciduous trees, such as 

• Beach 
• Chestnut 
• Oaks
• Fruit trees (various)

The forests mostly have fir, pine, and bush trees. These trees are commonly found in the northern part of the country and in high altitudes in Sterea and Peloponnese. Forests at lower altitudes mostly have poplars, plane trees, oaks, and cypress. At the foot of the trees, various bushes and flowers grow.

Bushes

• Oleander (Nerium oleander)
• Pomegranate (Punica granatum)
• Bouginavillea 
• Cistus incanus and slvi folius
• Erica manipui flora
• Pistacia
• Buxus sempervirens
• Juniperus
• Arbutus unedo and andrachne

Small plants and flowers

• Common Poppy 
• Wild irises
• Cyclamen
• Anemones
• Sea thistles 
• Caper bushes
• Daffodils and Daisies

First test

Big Gripe Tree

So you need to search for particular tree types in your extensive collection of nature assets. No problem, just use the search field. Actually, a big problem. There's no naming convention, so different packs name their trees differently. An even worse situation is that lots of packs don't live in the asset library. True-Vault, Arborea, Grasswald, et al. So I need to do about five searches using both Latin and common names.  So in the next post, I'm going to record my current tree catalogue. Be prepared for a LOT of trees.