===[TASK]=== Trees

[Sundiata]

25 minutes ago, wackyserious said:

it is often associated with folklore and superstition.

Same here...

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Pictures I took during our Odwira festival. I wasn't exactly focussing on the tree, but there it is, in all it's mystical glory, just outside the main palace of Akropong, our traditional capital. I believe libations are poured there, among other places. 

 

Traditional musicians with the Banyan tree in the background.

 

I actually found a picture of "the" Banyan tree in Akropong from the freakin' 1870's! I assume it's the same tree, as it's referred to as "the Banyan tree of Akropong", meaning only one tree like that in town, and other pics of the time seem to show it in the same place as the pictures above. It's probably several centuries old. If trees could talk...  

 

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

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 I could attest the need for monkeys , cited by Sundiata.

http://www.walkthroughindia.com/wildlife/15-species-of-monkeys-found-in-the-indian-subcontinent/

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[coworotel]

On 6/19/2019 at 11:06 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Scrolling quickly I thought this was a photo.

[Anaxandridas ho Skandiates]

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Edited April 8, 2021 by Anaxandridas ho Skandiates

[wraitii]

On 3/24/2019 at 3:27 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Does anyone else thing that object reflections in water should be darker? @wraitii

I'm gonna answer the super late as I've just been through this thread: maybe.I appear to have some code to make sky reflections a bit less prominent, but didn't use it for local reflections.

Indeed as nani said objects are renderer without shadows, so they're shaded but not shadowed, which might make them too bright in forest situations.

Adding shadows would be even slower though, and probably not doable for now.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 minute ago, wraitii said:

I'm gonna answer the super late as I've just been through this thread: maybe.I appear to have some code to make sky reflections a bit less prominent, but didn't use it for local reflections.

Indeed as nani said objects are renderer without shadows, so they're shaded but not shadowed, which might make them too bright in forest situations.

Adding shadows would be even slower though, and probably not doable for now.

Danke for the follow up. Was hoping to just inject the issue into the zeitgeist. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I need dat map resize patch for Atlas. Seems I need moar room for the Kalinga map. :/ Might put a jungle-ish terrain on one bank of the river and the sandy, savanna-ish terrain on the other bank of the river. Seems Kalinga wasn't as jungle-y as I imagined: 

 

 

Also, Gharials tend to bask and nest on sand banks rather than in jungle watering holes.

Edited June 22, 2019 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Stan`]

2 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I need dat map resize patch for Atlas.

I don't know if @vladislavbelov had the time to look at it yet  

[Anaxandridas ho Skandiates]

.

Edited April 8, 2021 by Anaxandridas ho Skandiates

[Lion.Kanzen]

On 6/22/2019 at 12:38 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I need dat map resize patch for Atlas. Seems I need moar room for the Kalinga map. :/ Might put a jungle-ish terrain on one bank of the river and the sandy, savanna-ish terrain on the other bank of the river. Seems Kalinga wasn't as jungle-y as I imagined: 

 

 

 

 

 

Also, Gharials tend to bask and nest on sand banks rather than in jungle watering holes.

 

Gharials are near that area. It is a fairly large area, with some important rivers.

There are several rivers in the area.

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Daya River..huh?

It's a little hard to judge 2000 years later.

Chilka Lake.

 

Tikarpada.

Satkosia and Mahandi River

 

 

Edited June 26, 2019 by Lion.Kanzen

[Hannibal_Barca]

I much appreciate the work on the bananas but would like to point out a few things that currently ruin its aesthetic qualities.

• too many bananas, wild bananas so long ago had quite few, but if we want a nice visual then alright, but half would do
• the supporting stem is too thin
• the banana "ring" placement is a convenient way I guess, but then at least the rings should be closer to each other to avoid unpleasantness on zoom
• non-fruiting variant would be cool too
• (and the template shouldn't call them trees)

[Sundiata]

1 hour ago, Hannibal_Barca said:

• too many bananas, wild bananas so long ago had quite few, but if we want a nice visual then alright, but half would do

Apparently that's what some of the South Indian (Kerala) bananas look like. Those bananas are short and thick, and they grow in huge bunches like that. Plantains used for cooking, and much more widely grown than bananas (at least in Africa) are larger/longer but less densely spaced. 

 

1 hour ago, Hannibal_Barca said:

•  the supporting stem is too thin

Actually I think it's fine. There's usually just a lot of dead leaves hanging down obscuring the stem, but when it's trimmed (most cultivators would cut aways dead leaves), then the stem is visible, and it's about the right size in the screenshots. If those bananas aren't being tended to, then yeah, there could be a mess of brown leaves hanging straight down against the stem. 

 

For the rest I think they look good. I only think that some of the leaves could have a more rounded tip. A variant with a smaller bunch isn't a bad idea. And another variant for plantains (cooking bananas) wouldn't be bad either  

[Hannibal_Barca]

[Lion.Kanzen]

Standard food company bananas?

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Or Wild Bananas?

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Original native ranges of the ancestors of modern edible bananas. M. acuminata is shown in green and M. balbisiana in orange.

 

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After reading a little, 6 articles and a wikipedia article about the species, the oldest one is not the wild one I presented, but it is the original one, the one we are looking for is a sub species that is part of the other branch of old bananas and the one that is from India I leave it in the quotation.

It would be necessary to look for the genetic origin and appearance, if there is one.

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• Musa acuminata subsp. burmannica Simmonds

= Musa acuminata subsp. burmannicoides De Langhe

Found in Burma, southern India, and Sri Lanka.

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Musa balbisiana is a wild-type species of banana native to eastern South Asia, northern Southeast Asia, and southern China.

 

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USE OF BANANA IN ANCIENT INDIA India being considered as one of the centres of origin of Banana, the ancient Indians were acquainted with this fruit from antiquity.  There are references of this fruit in “Rigveda” and the great epics “Ramayana” and “Mahabharatha”. Ancient Roman writers like Pliny referred this fruit as “Pala”.  Which perhaps derived from the word “Palam”, the vemacular name of banana fruit in south Indian states like Kerala, Madras and Karnataka, where this plant is found both in cultivated and wild forms.  Alexander the Great and his men while camping in India (BC 326) were reported to have observed the Hindu sages living on banana fruit alone and sleeping under the shade of trees and called banana as the fruit of the wise.  The botanical name of banana is Musa sapientum (means: food of the wise) is perhaps owes to this story.  The vernacular name for the banana plant is “Vazha” in Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada.  Dutch and portughese who reached the western coasts of India near Cannannoor in the 18th century reported the poplar use of banana by the local inhabitants as a staple food and called it as “Fig of Cannannoor”. Ancient Egyptians and Assyrians were known to have been familiar with bananas. Egyptian believed that when bananas were offered by the messengers of Death to Dead persons, the latte never returned to this world but processed straight into spirit land and therefore, called banana fruit as “fig of paradise”. The name Musa paradisica (Means food of the paradise spirit land) probably owes to this belief

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/224898897_Plantain_or_edible_banana_Musa_x_paradisica_var_sapiemtum_some_lesser_known_folk_uses_in_India

 

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Clearly Pliny and Theophrastus are both using the same source. Pliny often refers to the Alexander-writers but never to Theophrastus,*? so it is unlikely that he is simply paraphrasing Theophrastus. One of Alexander's companions, then, was either a very bad observer or he muddled his notes on two different trees. In the circumstances it is perhaps not very fruitful to try to identify the tree with giant leaves. There are various possibilities: the arjuna has large oval leaves, the paulownia has leaves which may be as much as sixteen 

developed a complicated argument to transfer the description of the leaf to the banana tree (Musa sapientum).** lt runs as follows. The text containing Theophrastus' passage about the banyan continues thus:

"There is also another tree which is very large and has wonderfully sweet

and large fruit; itis used for food by the sages of India who wear no clothes.

There is another tree whose leaf is oblong in shape like the feathers of the

ostrich; this they fasten on to their helmets, and it is about two cubits long."

These sentences could both clearly be descriptions of the banana tree, suggesting that the repeated “another” is an error of Theophrastus or his source. Although the Loeb translator asserts that the first sentence refers the jackfruit (kathal, Artocarpus heterophyllus), it seems just as likely that it refers to the banana, as was clear to Linnaeus when he devised the name Musa sapientum for the banana tree on the basis of this description.*” Bretzl suggests that the text is muddled, perhaps corrupt, and that the phrase 'as large [or “wide”] as a peltast's shield” should simply be moved to the end of the description of the banana leaf. Pliny, he observes, took the phrase as describing the breadth of the leaf rather than its overall size.* The remedy seems too extreme for the problem, but it is an object lesson in the slipperiness of our sources for Alexandrine botany, and an example of the difficulties under which even a scholar close to the events in time, such as Theophrastus, would labour.

The only other trees mentioned by Strabo in his account of India are both from Aristobulus.** One is the “wool-tree, which is apparently a misunderstanding of the cotton plant, and later came to be merged with the fabled tree of the Seres, from the branches of which silk was combed. Theophrastus also refers to the cotton plant as a tree”:

 

https://books.google.hn/books?id=8MFnDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA109&lpg=PA109&dq=pliny+pala+banana+musa&source=bl&ots=0MQK0PLlVb&sig=ACfU3U1rw6A3S1AGokuHdL2EV88XJ7V01g&hl=es-419&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiP2vzVq4rjAhXlqFkKHQ7yDdwQ6AEwDnoECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=pliny pala banana musa&f=false

 

Edited June 27, 2019 by Lion.Kanzen

[Enrique]

Wonderful work on the trees... 

I have these pines which I think I never ended uploading them...  they're using the old pine textures. If I did just ignore the post

Just in case you can reuse them somehow.

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cheers!

pines.rar

[Trinketos]

On 6/17/2019 at 5:29 AM, Stan` said:

@LordGoodThough palms look kinda edgy though, don't they ?

The trees can attack now?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

11 hours ago, Enrique said:

Wonderful work on the trees... 

I have these pines which I think I never ended uploading them...  they're using the old pine textures. If I did just ignore the post

Just in case you can reuse them somehow.

  Hide contents

 

cheers!

pines.rar 1.63 MB · 0 downloads

Definitely usable!

[myosotis]

This is a super neat thread, I love the detail being put into vegetation.

I was told that there might be some questions about tropical vegetation and I wanted to introduce one concept common to these forests in case it hasn't been considered: the idea of emergent trees.  Emergent trees are almost only found in tropical rainforest systems (one exception is American redwood forests) and are almost ubiquitous in these systems.  Trees in the emergent layer do not form a closed canopy.  I feel that even for people not familiar with these systems, the apperance of these trees is important for the gestalt of a tropical rainforest.

Teak (which I've noticed you've already included!) is an example of an emergent tree in asian tropical rainforests, as well as many trees in the genus Shorea.  Kapok and Brasil nut are emergents in Meso-america and South America respectively.

Keep being awesome!

 

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Edited July 23, 2019 by myosotis
original post was meant for other thread.

[LordGood]

@feneur can we have myosotis' post limit extended?

[Lion.Kanzen]

@wackyserious what you know from Southasian trees? Pics...

[wackyserious]

@LordGood Basically had most of the trees that I see around here in the Philippines and I am really happy about it

Not really that knowledgeable on trees found on deep rain-forests, what I recommend here are common trees in grassland areas.

So far, bamboos and mangroves are great and are really very common and widespread. Local names for the places in the Philippine Archipelago are often derived from the local flora. i.e. the City of Malabon in Metro Manila is derived from the malabong which translates to abundant in bamboo shoots.

Other trees that are common sight.

Indian almond tree  - locally called talisay trees. The catappa is very common here, a municipality in a province south of where I live was even named after the tree.

Mango tree - Mango is considered as the symbolic national fruit of three nations (India, Pakistan and the Philippines)

Tall grass - Really tall, sometimes exceeding a meter in height, and it is not always green, specially on grasslands which are exposed to the sun. It is only green for a month or so, it is mostly dry and withered most of the year, and really thick.. this is why bolo knives where very common back then.

Some images of other trees

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[Lion.Kanzen]

1 minute ago, wackyserious said:

@LordGood Basically had most of the trees that I see around here in the Philippines and I am really happy about it

Not really that knowledgeable on trees found on deep rain-forests, what I recommend here are common trees in grassland areas.

So far, bamboos and mangroves are great and are really very common and widespread. Local names for the places in the Philippine Archipelago are often derived from the local flora. i.e. the City of Malabon in Metro Manila is derived from the malabong which translates to abundant in bamboo shoots.

Other trees that are common sight.

Indian almond tree  - locally called talisay trees. The catappa is very common here, a municipality in a province south of where I live was even named after the tree.

Mango tree - Mango is considered as the symbolic national fruit of three nations (India, Pakistan and the Philippines)

Tall grass - Really tall, sometimes exceeding a meter in height, and it is not always green, specially on grasslands which are exposed to the sun. It is only green for a month or so, it is mostly dry and withered most of the year, and really thick.. this is why bolo knives where very common back then.

Some images of other trees

  Hide contents

 

some those are gard to know but you have good images to refering?

 

[wackyserious]

Hard to find good images since little information is documented online regarding the local trees. Google could be a little misleading as it could point you to other related species instead of the one you are searching for. I believe Lordgood is going in the right direction with his choice of trees.

Also, the tree of fruit is very abundant.

[Lion.Kanzen]

for example most of Mayan lowland have those but...I haven't idea.

[Nescio]

Something else, in Age of Kings trees had to be cut down before wood could be gathered, whereas in 0 A.D. a tree with 1/400 wood is still standing as if nothing has happened. And in Knights and Merchants, a woodcutter cuts down the tree, brings the trunk to his lodge, where he removes the bark and branches, and then a serf brings it to a carpenter's to convert it into timber. I'm not saying 0 A.D. should do the same, but it's worth discussing whether we want to preserve current practice, or want to have something more realistic eventually.

That said, creating cut-down versions (and animations?) of every tree actor is probably a lot of work.