I want to make photorealistic cities... but where to start?

[WL6 0]

 

What would I require to make a city like this?

 

What terrain mods/trees/props/etc would you recommend?

 

There's just far too much to go through right now, and I'm more than willing to take on someone else's setup as a beginner.

 

I'm not going to bother with the British style town now, for as a purist I couldn't abide the idea of mixing and matching :-/

 

North American will do - post what you think I need

[Lost Realist 762]

Well, your example isn't honestly a very intricate design... There's not that much special, only a very small amount of custom content, if any. But that aside, you shouldn't rely on somebody else's setup, it kills the fun and the sense of accomplishment when you put together the stuff you found and it's counterintuitive to creativity. If you search the STEX or the LEX for keywords like "terrain" or "water mod", you'll get a good collection and you can make your own choices, I wouldnt wanna do that for you. There sure is a lot out there, but there's not many shortcuts to creating something you find was worth your while and being a copy of someone can't be your goal. Dive into the popular exchanges, the learning curve around custom content may seem steep but really isn't and you'll be on your way soon.

[WL6 0]

In time I'm sure I will fine tune what I want, but for now I just want a full set of stuff to mess around with to get to grips with making photorealistic cities.

 

There's so much to go through, just a little help

[WL6 0]

 

What tree pack do I need to download in order to have trees like this?

[infamousjbe 592]

Search for the author by the name of Girafe over on the LEX. Most of his MMPs are HD.

[Indiana Joe 1,750]

In addition, the Aerden Tree Controller is largely based on Giraffe's flora; that will give you a god mode brush.  And it's seasonal.  Highly recommended, and completely worth the dozen-or-two dependencies.

[Lost Realist 762]

It's girafe, not giraffe. I made that mistake and got a little annoyed when I couldn't find him. Here's a LEX search: http://www.google.com/cse?cx=partner-pub-1378940987028293%3Awyjdrk-l6zg&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=girafe&sa=Search#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=girafe&gsc.page=1

 

You have to be a registered member of the SC4Devotion LEX, which is highly recommended anyway.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Patience.  An overloaded Plugin suite won't help you very much, just make life more complicated.  I have what many here would consider a tiny set of plugins but it contains 898.6 MB with  4387 folders and files, or to break that down a little further 3731 of them are files (actual plugins).  Many of them don't show up in menus because I don't care much for ploppable items.

 

I carefully strip any non-plugins from the downloads and keep them elsewhere.  I also don't load stuff I won't be using, principally RHW and GLR.  The two of those would put me over 1GB, and why, since they only clutter up my game.

 

Oh, and you asked about what to do.  Well, if you've read the thread on overeager players, then what's left to do is gather experience and custom content you need as you go along.  Take your time.  Several of us have many years of practice for you to catch up on.  It is a long learning curve and after 10 years I am still finding things out.