Building a Village - From the bottom to the top

Gemini Queen

For one of my projects, I'm trying to build a village for orcs. Which means that it's got to have the whole foresty look, the huts/buildings, whichever one I choose to use. Although, I would love a little bit of suggestion when it cames to purchasing which packs for it. 

1. I have a coiuple of skydomes for day time that I want, but I need some good looking ones for night time. 
2. I've found several forest products, but some of them aren't the most clear on how they work. 
   1. Forest Glade looks good, but I'm not sure if the trees are able to be moved on and off the plot. 
   2. Forests Trees and Grass World Building Set says that it comes with the grass, but is that the actual dirt too or just the grass without a bottom?
   3. EM - Aspen Billboards And Forests seems like it would be one of the best ones for me to get considering that it's just a bunch of cutouts, and they would render a lot faster, but it doens't come with a ground. 
   4. I need a dirt path. I've found a couple of products that come with a preset dirt path, but I need a product(s) that would allow me to build my own dirst path for them to be walking along. I'm sure that I could just do this by getting a dirt plot and then placing grass on the parts that I don't want showing, but that's going to slow the PC down from how much there is in the scene. 

Thanks for any help with this! It's going to turn into a big thing down the road, so here we are! 

Sevrin

For forests, a lot can be done with Ultrascenery.  There are many examples of what can be done in this thread.

UltraScenery [Commercial] - Daz 3D Forums

WendyLuvsCatz

https://www.daz3d.com/md-the-orc-village

Gemini Queen

Sevrin - Thanks so much for this! This looks like exactly what I was looking for! I will keep it in mind and keep an eye on it for when it goes on sale at some point! 

WendyLuvsCatz - Thanks for showing me this! Not sure how I overlooked this, might be cause I'm tired. But thanks! It's funny, cause I've seen this. I was reading a comic a loooong time ago and saw the same scene. Didn't know what Daz3d was at the time, but I know now! Do you know though if there's a product that has more options for the huts/houses/tents of tribal people? I'll be doing a google search for this as well. 

WendyLuvsCatz

there is this

https://www.daz3d.com/tribal-village-huts

and for more American 

https://www.daz3d.com/cheyenne-bundle

 

Gemini Queen

WendyLuvsCatz - Thanks! I've added both to my wishlist and will be seeking out some more stuff like this. 

Also, I looked into the UltraScenery, but I'm not seeing which product specifically has the trails that I'm looking for. Like I see them in the promo images, but I'm not sure which one has the actual props that I could use to build the roads/paths/trails. What I was kind of hoping for was something along the lines of Streets by maclean or CyberCity Roadkit by inception 8. I'm still looking for this as we speak. Thanks for both of your help! 

 

WendyLuvsCatz

I would use Ultrascatter pro myself and a terrain exported from Bryce, Carrara, Terragen, Gaea to name a few,

or

https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts/mcjelevate

you can use a distribution map for paths and RCgincy's roadmaker http://www.shapemagic.com/roadmaker/ to create them on the greyscale maps for those softwares

you can also get real world greyscale maps from https://terrain.party/

Gemini Queen

Thanks! I will use these and see what kind of results I get. 

Gemini Queen

Currently trying to figure it out right now, and I'm gonna need to find a forum for this program. It looks like the main tutorial that's on the site is really outdated. When I load it into Daz, the menu options that he/she/they are referring to aren't the same. It's going to take a while, but I'll figure it out. Thanks for showing me this though!

 

Gemini Queen

Alright, I think I know what I'm gonna do now. 

I like the overall size of these products, so these are the ones that I'm going to be using for the main shots of the village - 

https://www.daz3d.com/md-the-orc-village

https://www.daz3d.com/humble-homestead-in-the-hills

https://www.daz3d.com/medieval-lands

When it comes to the pathways that I wanted to build, I discovered something peculiar. Since I have the City Roads, then I can just change the surface to a dirt road, and boom, there it is. But for other scenes, there's these - 

https://www.daz3d.com/varangian-way

https://www.daz3d.com/path-to-greywood

https://www.daz3d.com/ranch-road-path

https://www.daz3d.com/over-the-hill-country-lane

https://www.daz3d.com/the-harpwood-trail-for-daz-studio

https://www.daz3d.com/mountain-trail

I had to rethink what it was that I wanted, cause it's not like I'm making a video game where the character has to walk from one scene to another, I just wanted that. But using these, either independently or togehter, I can create the ideal view that I was looking for with the figures travelling down the path. For the huts, I'd use the two that WendyLuvsCatz suggested as well as stuff like this  -

https://www.daz3d.com/forest-hut

https://www.daz3d.com/a-celtic-crannog-on-lough-ea

My project will probably change shape as it goes on, but thanks a lot for showing me what you did!