Having spoken to Rickious again, it seems that getting hold of the models originally conceived here:
Murkwood Concept art and developed right through (check the pics on the different pages) to around about here:
Murkwood Concept art and beyond, may not prove to be too much of a problem.
The only thing that Rickious queries is the difficulty in exporting the models from Rhino3D. What we may need help with though is in making sure that the models have texturing and collision.
@ Koniption - I really don't want to heap more work on your shoulders, KP but do you think this is do-able?
According to many who have interpreted Helstrom as being within a large tree then this is potentially our capital city right here. However, it wasn't my own first choice but the other option is that we form a major city as opposed to two small settlements. For example, Mulum and Okeen-Ra are both in central Murkwood and close to each other. What if Mulum was a part of this construction and Okeen-Ra another part? We could split this by having different settlements within each tree-ring or we could split it by having one settlement ground-based and the other further up.
Rickious has asked me for ideas and suggestions so there's the first one. It would be good to use a thin outer ring as a small slum-housing area using LR's and/or Senten's huts but then to have an inner ring which looks similar to what he has suggested. Some small houses might appear on the outsides of the massive tree stump by passing through doors and we could probably use re-textured watertop huts for this.
Inside the tree stump, it would be wonderful to have the same designs as Rickious has suggested with a hollowed-out central trunk, inside of which winds a spiralling staircase. A watery docklands at the bottom provides a 'play area' for Paatru and Argonian alike whilst the pod-like houses and net-like bridges form most of the houses in the inner city. The watery docklands can also prove excellent storage for Argonian eggs.
I figure that, rather than having trees grown together, we could just have a stump as getting so many leaves and trees so close together without seriously affecting the FPS might be a real problem.
One solution is to make it so that a tight ring of cypress trees are placed just inside the ring on the outside or to have a mist effect that obscures the canopy. Once inside the main trunk, I could place the place inside an interior cell with a sky texture consisting of massed leaves which might look a little like a canopy.
Otherwise, we're stuck with a stump.
How's that for you, Rickious? Bear in mind that the tree model would have to be pretty damn big but not be so big that it caused us serious problems with cluttering the interiors. One thing I like about LR's huts is that they're super-small and easily managed. In fact, they could do with being a bit bigger but they're an interior modeller's dream...