Great idea

Great idea. Another superb tutorial Luke.

Excellent Tutorial

Excellent tutorial; as always.  Is there a reason you chose to make it in two pieces instead of using a longer balsa wood dowel?  

Looking forward to the next tutorial.

Lou

(Only spotted the dog twice- will need to watch it again.

The trees you're modeling ...

The trees you're modeling are old growth deep forest trees along a man-made forest edge that has been cut. Only deep forest trees like this have no foliage and long bare trunks. When man comes along and cuts down some forest, the exposed forest edge trees will look like this with only foliage at the top.

Trees along a natural forest edge have foliage all the way to the ground. Also small groves of conifers will tend to have foliage most of the way to all the way to the ground.

Great job and some nice looking trees. I've also done the two-piece trunk process to get a more detailed trunk on my deep forest trees. I always recommend modeling from photos, so use some reference photos of real trees to make sure you're modeling nature more realistically.

BTW, one tip to get more natural looking "airy" foliage on a conifer is to vary the sizes of the "pads" you're threading on the skewer. Big one - much smaller one - big one - much smaller one, ... like that. The resulting foliage is less dense and creates a more realistic variation in the trees. Mix in some done this way with ones only having the progressively larger "pads". You can also mix and match, throwing in a larger - smaller - larger mix only in some spots on the trees.

Natural conifer forest edge - notice foliage goes all the way to the ground.

Man-made cut forest edge. Notice the bare trunks and only canopy foliage at the top.

These are the trees you're modeling, Luke. It's a very special kind of conifer only found in this sort of location where there's been a lot of cut trees.

Simple and realistic

One of the best tutorials ever. 

Off to find the materials on Monday.

Thanks for sharing the knowledge.

Thanks Guys

I think Joe touched on it a little about modeling the top separate from the bottom, I mainly did it this way because I didn't see the reason to detail the top half of the tree due to it being cover and I could spend more time on the areas that would be seen, however there would be no reason you couldn't just use the balsa dowel and taper it right through to the top. If you were going to have bare patches between branches of foliage then modeling the trunk right through would be a good idea.

Thanks for the wealth of information Joe, I tried to find a good photo on Google similar to the man made forest edge to use in my video as an example but I kept coming up with results that weren't what I was after... Your photo is perfect.

...I just typed in 'Man made forest edge' and got exactly what I wanted... it's all in the key words! 

I'll certainly be giving your tip for getting an 'airy' tree a try, I'll post some images up here when they are done. 

Thanks again for the great feedback
Cheers
Luke

Thanks for heads up on cocnut fiber liners

ive just come back from the states and was shown the furnace filter method you talk of.

like you I'm in Australia so thanks for suggesting the fiber mats.

you have some great video honors Luke keep them coming  

Simon

Thank you for the clarification

Thank you for the clarification on why you make the trees in two parts.

Lou

Tall Pine Trees

Thank you.   Enjoyed it.  Remove the dead branches and readjust the matting and Ta-da you have the USA Southern Pine, be it Longleaf, Loblolly, etc.  Long straight trunks are a given.

S

Luke Great Tutorial as

Luke Great Tutorial as usual. 

Thanks for sharing.

Ralph Renzetti (CN6401)

My plan for these trees

I recently watched a movie with my daughter which was the inspiration for these trees, I'm not very familiar with the location but the movie was an old one "Harry and the Hendersons", there are some great scenes in that movie where they are camping in the forest.

I was also experimenting with making paved roads, the thread is here -  https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/paved-roads-12203706

Basically I plan to create a scene similar to the photo below except I plan to have a train line running through the scene.
 

I'll probably have the line running parallel to the road but I'd like to incorporate a crossing in some way? It's interesting how the road has a yellow line on the left side? I'm in Australia and they use yellow on the side to indicate that there is no parking on that particular side of the road (South Australia), laws differ slightly depending on the state.

You usually see the yellow on roads with blind corners or on road sides approaching intersections.

The scene in the photo looks so fantastic I just hope I can sell the illusion in HO scale I want the viewer to feel like they are looking down the road into a deep forest...

Cheers
Luke

Another Great Video

Once again Luke you have made a great tutorial. Thanks so much!

About the road markings

This is probably 2 lanes of a 4 lane road with a forested median. The yellow line identifies the median and the possibility (?) of on coming traffic. The white dashed centerline is for traffic lanes moving in the same direction. Probably in a very busy park area.

Forest Roads

You got me curious so I checked, IMDB, and the forest scenes in Harry and the Hendersons were filmed near North Bend, Washington, east of Seattle.   

You might also want to search for photos of the California Western Railroad, aka, the Skunk Train (https://www.skunktrain.com.) it's a tourist line running through the northern California redwood forest connecting Ft. Bragg and Willits.

Looking forward to your updates.

Lou

Very nice Luke! I always

Thanks Luke

Great technique on making Pines.

Having spent a lot of time up in the Sierra Mts. in California I can back Joe up on the old growth of the style of trees you are making. A couple of things to keep in mind about building forests. There are no straight lines when laying out your trees. If you do have them then what you have is a reseeded area after an area has been clear cut by loggers. In that case you want the trees with foliage almost all the way to the ground and then it really depends on how old the forest is.

Add ground clutter. There should be a lot of dead branches all over the place. If man has not cleared them out to use for fire wood it could be almost impossible to walk through. The dead branches won't be piled real high though as mother nature turns it into dirt pretty fast all things considered. Man can make a forest seem park like if there are enough of them going through an area picking up dead branches for fire wood.

A bush or two or even more will show up if the canopy is not real thick along with grass. And deer if there are enough of them will keep the grass short.

Lou mentioned the Redwoods. Modeling that area is a whole different proposition. Redwood forests have an amazing amount of fern growth in them. And if it is an area that has not been logged you will not be able to get beyond the first couple of feet. Also the trees are mammoth. 10-30ft diameter trunks at ground level and going up to 200-300ft. A lot of the trunks are scared with old lightning strike fires that have burned out part of the trunk enough that you can move in and set up a place to live at least short term and a lot of 4 legged beasts do. Redwoods for whatever reason are hard to burn whole they are living.

Jack

I agree with Jack.

i grew up in Sacramento and, like Jack spent a lot of time in the Sierra Nevada mountains and he is spot on in his description of the forests there. I mentioned the Skunk Train as, while there are a lot of redwoods, the line goes though stands of Douglas fir, grand fir, Bishop pine and deciduous trees, so photos will give you an idea of a rail line though the forest looks like.  Redwood forests that have not been logged are beautiful but almost impenetrable. 

Using the trees

Using the photo I posted earlier as inspiration I managed to build a small diorama and used the trees I make in the tutorial.

I feel that it's a convincing scene, the trees fit well and I think using the sign to suggest a location adds to the overall atmosphere. 

I actually filmed the entire process of making the diorama and I'm currently editing the footage now to make a video tutorial that I will post on YouTube.

I've never been to Yellowstone National Park but it looks very nice? (I live in Australia and I've never traveled to the US... one day!) If you've ever been there you'll have to let me know if this diorama does it justice or am I way of the mark for that location?

P.S. The Yellowstone sign won't be in the video tutorial, it was basically an after thought and I wasn't sure how the sign would turn out. Once I finished the sign I was actually quite happy with it so I'll probably film a separate tutorial about how I made the sign, it's basic but I used a few different techniques you might be interested in?

Cheers
Luke

The Yellowstone sign is one

The Yellowstone sign is one of the best I've seen.  Its very clear and distinct for a small model sign.  

Making the sign

Nice Ute

Hi Luke

Very nice Diorama,Trees and  sign look great,  and is that a FC Holden Ute parked on the wrong side of the road, they must be Aussie tourists visiting Yellowstone

Terence Boardman

Luke

Couple of things to change. What is the time period????

I ask that because to be accurate you will need to swap the car for an American or Japanese import. If it is 50's stick with American.

Park car on the right side not the left. Get it off the pavement.

Bears and bears and more bears. One thing about Yellowstone it has a lot of bears and the visitors bless their ignorant souls like to feed them from their cars and some of the dumber ones get out of their cars to throw food or just to take photos. Cars and the people in them are consider a major part of the supply chain not to eat but to beg from. Since the mid 60's when I was 1st up there, there was always a line of cars snaking around the park in both directions. It wasn't continuous although sometimes it seemed like it. Bears would congregate along the road and traffic would just stop to take in the wild life. It hasn't changed any that I have heard about and I suspect that a You tube search will bring up some examples.

Scenery looks good.

Jack