I travelled north this week to visit family as they live on the border of the Needwood Forest. I knew this trip was coming and considering that my first dungeon level in a forest I thought it would be worthwhile looking round the forest for inspiration and research. I used my Unit 8 Trello board to plan out what I needed to do while in the forest. The key takeaways I need where what flora were found there, a recording of the forest atmosphere (ATMO), photos of any area I would like to try and use as a texture: tree bark grass or mud came to mind. I took photos as I walked up to the wood and throughout to make sure I had a good range of images to identify the flora and any I could use for textures. I also took a moment to complete a risk assessment to limit risk to me while in the forest.

I stopped about ten minutes after entering the forest to record the sounds of the forest thinking I could use it in my game to add depth to the forest. The family member I went with suggested they could use their phone to see what birds we could hear while I took the recording. They used the Merlin Bird ID app that gave us a list of birds that it picked up as I recorded.

The soil underfoot was bone dry and I was told it hadn’t rained properly in the area for nearly six weeks as the area we were in was usually waterlogged all year round.

This time of year wild garlic is out in force and it stretches across the forest floor as far as the eye can see. I took a few pictures of it and decided it would make a interesting texture I wouldn’t find online as nobody would think of it. When I returned to my laptop I fed an image of the wild garlic into Adobe Substance 3D Sampler.

It was overall a successful trip and worth my time as I have already added some of the sounds and textures to my game. However I felt the wild garlic texture was better suited to the 3rd level and the cloud forest it is meant to be.