389 replies to this topic

[jurgie]

Galleries do add a lot to the overall look but you are absolutely right, I have never seen any either that actually looked good. The crowds in earlier versions of TW actually looked better than they did in 2007 and later. We used to call them the Zombies from Night of the Living Dead.

[jurgie]

Better be carefull Birdie, if this course starts looking any better than it already does, the PG crew might have redesign a whole new platform just to compliment your course creation.

[Drrobmiller]

Wow,...impressive screen shots

 

cant wait to fire up this baby

 

Nice work Bird man!

 

 

Dr Rob

[jurgie]

Wow,...impressive screen shots

 

cant wait to fire up this baby

 

Nice work Bird man!

 

 

Dr Rob

Hey Rob, Birdie is looking for some desingers to share a little of the load in bringing this project to the finish line. You were the first man I thought of. Interested?

[Joe Habiger]

I feel the forces and the pressure...
And as i'm definitely interested how this runs on other machines i'll try to prepare one or two tech alphas.

To be serious i sometimes also thought if i should better ask the community if there is interest in a cooperational work to make a release come a little sooner.

 

Honestly, cooperational work WILL NOT work because you keep trying to do and add new things. If you never stop trying it will never get released. It's your course you don't have to release it at all but I honestly don't think you can stop trying new asset packages and new types of blender stuff which only kills us because we will never see a version. I think all of us designers love what You and DP Roberts have done for us in showing us new things (You specifically) but he has at least released two courses..lol

I never meant no ill will towards this reply but we'll never even see a beta unless you just stop adding and trying new things. 

[Birdie]

This wasn't actually meant as an inquiry. I was just thinking maybe... if... eventually one day...

And yes, there was and is a lot of experimentation and fooling around. But generally at least a tech alpha is ready. I just want to optimize a few things the next days. I killed the SpeedMaxtrees billboards and will replace the outer trees with some highly simplified leaf card versions to hopefully gain back some fps.

[Birdie]

This Reshade ray tracing shader is really a killer. Here together with a bit of bloom. Also with dynamic sky on this works great.

[Buck]

Good lord

 

That is sensational Birdie

 

This shot (below) is out. of. this. world.

So so good

 

[yesrushdt]

Looking good can't wait to try the tech alpha.

[3199E5kennetharry]

Don't want to rush you birdie but August is fast approaching.

[Birdie]

Will try to upload a pre-alpha tonight. Can someone recommend a host where I don't have to share too much private data?
Mega nz?
Upload-newbie here...

[RobC]

Most people use Mega I think...Don't know about the Data bit tho

[jspirate]

Will try to upload a pre-alpha tonight. Can someone recommend a host where I don't have to share too much private data?
Mega nz?
Upload-newbie here...

Very exciting!  It sure looks amazing in the screens.  How is FPS holding up Birdie?

[Joe Habiger]

I see 33 fps in the last screenshot, if he is not in 4k you 1080p boys will not be happy and us 4k boys won't be able to play it at all.

[Birdie]

Generally in 4k with everything at max. Only tree detail distance slider is at 1.5. You will gain lots of fps with not much of an visual downgrade at this setting. I would say this slider is the most important on this course.

This ray tracing shader which was used in these last screens is also very fps hungry. This can easily eat 10-20fps alone. And this spot on the 9th island green with the 3dg and the clubhouse and some really high poly palms around is probably the most demanding area on the course. There is still lots of room for some decimating and optimization. I more or less just replaced all my vegetation with a handy replacer script to include the Maxtree stuff. I only prepared a few species and will replace some with less demanding ones and so on. But on most holes you should be able to play in a smooth 4k, at least in the actual state and given you have some decent hardware.

And if nothing helps, even with a resolution a step down at 2560x1440 it shouldn't look that bad. This shot is at about the same location as in the shot above but you see 60+fps. No ray tracing, but a bit of reshade sharpening for compensation and some bloom. Don't know how this would look on a projector but for the old fashioned PC player it should be okay.

[Birdie]

Download should be available in a few minutes i hope....

[Birdie]

Couldn't resist, so...

Soon on your desktop. Fluid simulated water fountains... (i know, stupid presenting these with just some screenshots...)

 

[Birdie]

Here is a tiny WIP (Water In Progress...) and my journey to get this working. This is made of mesh sequences, for example Blender fluid simulation or Alembic cached sequences where every frame of the motion is represented by its own mesh. You export the frames/meshes of each frame from Blender as *.objs in a folder so you have lets say 200 objs or whatever depending on the lenght of the sequence. I was very excited when i put all these obj meshes In Unity as children in a parent object and was able to play them back with a little MeshSequencer script i found. This script simply enables and disables one after one child/frame and you also can adjust the playback speed. This worked perfectly in Unity editor and game mode as well.... but sadly like with so many scripts it didn't work in JNPG. 

So i tried to find a workaround. First i tried it manually with animation clips which indeed works. You can enable/disable objects by time but it's a lot of work to setup 200-300 frames. I made a fluid sequence by animation clip with just ten frames and it already didn't look that bad.

Then i was reading something about a Unity GameObjectRecorder or HierarchyRecorder. But this only works from Unity 2017 and up. So, installed Unity 2017. BTW what a great experience when you first open a newer Unity version than we are used to. You instantly think "if we only could..."

Okay, then i imported my objs to Unity 2017, attached the MeshSequence script and the HierarchyRecorder script (which I had to edit a bit by trial and error tactic...) and, to make it not too long..., in the end this Recorder script spits out a *.anim file with all these 2 billion enables/disables.

And luckily these 2017 anim files also work in Unity 5 so i then attached it on my parent obj there and finally it was working.

Here is a short preview what this can produce. The fountain in the back i have to record again. But i also will not keep both fountains on this lake. I just placed them all there while testing. In game it's even more fluid. Bandycam, Unity and Blender in the background probably dropped the framerate a bit.

https://youtu.be/_NkaEgZAKYw

 

 

[slouis]

Birdie, I'm wondering if you have fixed any of the issues reported after you released the first preview version.  For example, adding collision properties to trees and drops when balls are hit in to hazards.  If I remember correctly there were a couple of tee boxes that had trees directly in front. 

I am waiting for these fixes before playing your course again.  Thanks.

[DPRoberts]

Birdie, great work. I love your persistence.

I have no clue about how you've accomplished that. I am curious, though, did you ever try and import the .blend file?