Tools & MMP selection:
I have a lot of MMPs. To make these images I do use a few that I do not show in this post. Some of the names are featured in the images for the ones I use most regularly, but I am not going to list everything needed because experimentation and variety is obviously key to make something look unique. Also, your own region may have a very different climate and therefore need different plants and trees.
If you're into making landscapes look as realistic as possible, you'll likely have most of the available MMPs already. That said, here are some components that I really couldn't live without, and neither can you, if you want to use this technique.
Terrain 'Brushes' from this set:
https://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=3077
Girafe's flora:
I've linked the feather grass because I use them a lot in the below images, but you really should just download all of it. The trees are incredibly beautiful and I use them all the time, but the small bushes and grasses such as the link below will especially find a home over and over again in all sorts of situations.
https://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=3001
VIP Ruralpack:
Again, some great little grasses, plants and wildflowers can be found in this pack.
These Sands:
Heblem made the original set and FrankU added on to it, this means that this selection of sands blend together very well.
SM2 Coastline Kit:
Another useful bundle with lots of variety and extremely high quality.
PEG terrain Kit.
Finally this terrain kit is very useful, and actually bundles a lot of content to make it easier to download and keep track of. If you don't have a lot of MMPs already, this is a useful 'starter kit' for lots of situations.
'Building' some nature
1. Load a tile. It probably helps at this stage if it has some water in it. I'm using 'common as muck' SC4 'Game' water, but you could apply the same technique to any of the MMP ploppable waters that are out there.
These sand dunes are likely to appear along gentle, lowland terrain, and that is what this tile is. Craggier, rockier terrains are likely to feature cliffs at the coastline rather than dunes.
It doesn't really matter which terrain and water mods you are using if any, but to clarify for anyone who wants to know and actually reads the whole article:
My terrain mod is the Berner Oberland by Gobias
https://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=2834
My Game water is the PEG Brigantine water mod:
2. We have zoomed in on the section of beach and we are about to go into Mayor Mode because we'll need the Water Menu and the MMP Menu.
3. Select the 7.5M raiser and plop it a number of times a few tiles inland from the game 'beach' that appears at the edge of the water.
4. Use road stubs to level the terrain to make the dunes a bit larger. Some you can link together in more of a consistent hillside, and some should be left a bit smaller, try to use random patterns to an extent. Yes, 7.5M is a pretty significant sand dune and was done mainly for speed. You could also use the different raiser / digger lots to get different elevations than 7.5M, I.e. use a 15M raiser, flatten the area with road stubs and then use a 10M digger to get an overall +5M.
5. Bulldoze those stubs.
6. Select the 'JENX Beach paint' lot from the mod linked above. There are pebble versions, white sand versions, a dead leaves & roots one which is very good, but here we are only using one brush, the normal beach paint.
7. Plop the lot with some relish to cover the entire dunes / beach area. Every dark orange square shown here is a plopped Beach Paint lot. The reason they show is that this plops in the 'water' view, when we go back above ground, the squares will be gone. You will not be able to plop MMPs directly on the same tile where you placed the Beach paint lot, so try to get coverage without plopping in every single tile, you can see the very green terrain grass poking through at some points. Don't worry about that, this is where we will hide it with some plants.
8. Now zoomed in and selecting our first MMP. The 'Feather Grass' mentioned above. I use this all the time because it can grow virtually anywhere, even this windswept, salty, dry environment. I run along the seam between the beach that we painted earlier, and the terrain grass beyond.
9. Place covering the spaces where you can see your terrain poking through, but try to be a bit sparing and don't cover every empty space up with stuff, this landscape is supposed to be quite bleak and we shouldn't be afraid of a bit of nothing, it is the easiest thing to plop after all.
10. I've added some seasonal bushes (make sure you plant on September 1st) and some shrubs. I've selected the 'Grey Sand' which you can get in the pack above for the next part.
11. Use the grey sand with a touch alongside your plants, to add texture and depth. I've also used it to break up the transition between the beach texture and the grass terrain, to save using a line of vegetation the whole way along. You can obviously use the other sands too, but I like the depth that the grey gives along with the yellowish sandy beach.
12. Some MMPs show through the beach terrain totally, some do not show at all, and some show in unusual ways. Here I have use the SM2 small beach stones to draw a trail between the dunes.
13. Adding some gravel, here with the PEG shoreline (Pebble) to the areas inside the sandy zone, to add a bit more depth and to stop the terrain looking all one colour.
14. Adding the seasonal Ferns and Jennets from the VIP Ruralpack linked above. These appear right at the bottom of my MMP menu and therefore I add them last because there is 2 minutes of mousewheel scrolling between the other things I've used and these. Anyway, they are very important as they look at home in this scenario. Often things that would not necessarily grow in an area IRL will look fine in SC4. Just play around. And if someone could make 'Gorse' to tell me where the MMP is, that would be fantastic.
15. Now zoomed out to show the area as an overview, the circled areas are where we can see the terrain, and the next areas we will begin to develop as we move along the coastline.
You could conceivably just use the god mode trees to meet up to the beach here, but I think in most contexts on a coast such as this, the naturally grown trees would be a fair way inland and you would have quite a large amount of grasses or marshes.
I hope someone finds this useful, apologies for the errors in the pictures, but I think they clearly show what's important.
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