2551 replies to this topic

[Kablammo11]

...but let's look ahead. Willow Heath is over and done for me.

If there were one thing I wish I could do different there, it's 

POT BUNKERS!

 

But I can't. They won't give me potbunkerability, the rascals! So, if there were one other thing I could do differently, here it is:

CF 2 UNITY texture transition

 

 

It has been commented upon unfavourably by many testers after EA - and they are right. You are looking at the transitional zone between Course Forge and Unity. CF builds nice meshes with good textures - Unity tries hard but fails to offer an acceptable texture quality on plots that are as large as an entire golf course.

Zoom forward to the Black Swan and this shows the same problem once again. To the left all is well, to the right is the bad pixel zone yet not textured. The blending of 1 meter is also quite dramatically not-so-good. If a player in a game knocks his ball out here, he has firstly played a poor shot. And, secondly, he will notice the decrease in quality...

 

 

What to do? There's nothing I can do except cover the whole plot with CF meshes that have good textures. But that would cause more problems with texture tiling and lack of variety.

So I have opted for gaining up to 10 meters of good textures around my holes by adding an additional outer texture to my layout:

 

 

That cyan outline enclosing all the other shapes shows you the new element best. I call it "The Pampas", but it will act as an expansion of the course and serve as an additional belt of deep rough.

 

 

And here it is: A few additional acres of Pampas on the outside, to make sure that stray shots land on a visually pleasant surface. It looks a little bit like the deep frozen spinach cubes you can (yet should not) buy. But of course I will plant grass billboards on this to add a bit more biodiversity.

 

 

Of course, since that surface will hover some 15 cms ABOVE the Unity terrain, one which the grass billboards will be placed, I will have to account for this offset and create billboards with a slight gap at the bottom.

Oh well... Can't disappoint my fans, can I?

 

 

Alright, cya on the Black Swan... Which will be a truly disgraceful waste of time without any

POT BUNKERS!

[RobC]

In all that very interesting information one thing jumps out at me is the "15cm above" mularkey....

Oh and you want Pot Bunkers and I want Course Forge

[Jimbobh]

Oh and you want Pot Bunkers and I want Course Forge

I agree with CGXRobC

[Kablammo11]

CGXRobC and Jimbobh, you will want Pot Bunkers, too. I'm sacrificing myself for you guys, here.

 

Yes, 15cm. Think of the Unity terrain as the base of your golf course, as of zero altitude. Everything CF, the course meshes for rough, fairway, green and sand etc hovers (unnoticeably) 15 cm above the terrain. There is a default value you can select for this offset, from 0 to 100cm. 15cm are set by default.

This was done to allow players to construct (and get away with) bunker lips. At altitude zero these would push below the Unity terrain and the bunker inside become invisible. That is why the CF meshes are being placed on top of the terrain like a band aid on top of the skin. 

[shimonko]

What texture size are you using? I'm using a 512x512 terrain texture here at a tiling of 2 and aren't getting as much washed out blurriness:

[Kablammo11]

I'm using 512 base textures and 1024 shaders for CF.

I'm considering going up to 1024 terrain textures for the Black Swan, used 512 in Willow Heath, tiled at anything from 2 to 20 meters depending on the scale of texture. Yes, reducing the size helps, but will reduce visual variety imo. Not to diss your example, but I think that a CF mesh would look considerably better than what you are showing us now.

 

Shimonkourse? Dayum, gotta start working on Kabland 11, then... That pine tree has the longest pine needles I've ever seen. Mayhap a scaling issue?

 

And one more little tidbit for practiced eyes: See the little white impurities right on top of the bunker in front? Just a few bright pixels. They are tiny, but I suspect that is the fresnel overlay acting up. It can be observed in PG as well, especially on lower graphics settings. I get plenty of these, too, and have no idea what to do about them.

[Kablammo11]

(sorry, double post)

[aftrshok99]

I'm going to post this here as you are one that has been using CF for a while now. You've seen some of the courses in TGC and how much planting there is on some of those courses. Will that be an issue when people do the same thing with CF? Will you have to turn down settings in PG to make it the course play smoothly? I ask because the courses included in PG are a little more sparse planting wise then they are in TGC and that is a design choice by the designers of the course.

[shimonko]

I'm considering going up to 1024 terrain textures for the Black Swan, used 512 in Willow Heath, tiled at anything from 2 to 20 meters depending on the scale of texture. Yes, reducing the size helps, but will reduce visual variety imo. Not to diss your example, but I think that a CF mesh would look considerably better than what you are showing us now.

And one more little tidbit for practiced eyes: See the little white impurities right on top of the bunker in front? Just a few bright pixels. They are tiny, but I suspect that is the fresnel overlay acting up. It can be observed in PG as well, especially on lower graphics settings. I get plenty of these, too, and have no idea what to do about them.

The little white sparkles - I've got some gap between the bunkers and the enclosing meshes at the moment. Pretty sure the tree is a PP stock tree, but I will check just in case I've accidentally done something to it.

Just comparing the CF mesh texturing of your pic above, I think they're pretty close at the moment. Looking forward to the texture updates Mike is doing actually.

[Kablammo11]

I'm going to post this here as you are one that has been using CF for a while now. You've seen some of the courses in TGC and how much planting there is on some of those courses. Will that be an issue when people do the same thing with CF? Will you have to turn down settings in PG to make it the course play smoothly? I ask because the courses included in PG are a little more sparse planting wise then they are in TGC and that is a design choice by the designers of the course.

 

Yes, I've seen some of the TGC courses, but not nearly enough and not from close by to pronounce myself on the issue.

 

Fact is that trees and large bushes, we were told, are indeed a huge drag on performance. They increase the polygon count, or the LoD, tremendously. On a personal note I also consider trees to be too much of a convenience for lazy designers, who use them to block views that are not pleasant enough (instead of doing something constructive about it). So easy to block out the ugly bits with them...

So, yes, trees are bound to be an issue in PG, too. Those pesky foliage carriers always are!

 

In theory, there are no limits to the number of trees you can plant. The PG graphic settings will help, allowing you to set tree billboard distance at a reasonable range, cutting down on the number of full 3D trees. You may even plant tree billboards outright (like in Links) for the more distant trees in your landscape, or special low-poly trees to reduce the work load (Play Crystal pines and compare the main view to the overhead view to see what I mean).

It's a designer choice, as you say, and if you think that PG uses less trees than TGC, that is indeed due to design choices and not necessarily because of technical limitations. But if you do want to create a rain forest or deep jungle course, you will need to get creative about how to minimise your LoD. Whereas the GNCA does not let you get creative in this regard (unless I am mistaken, which I might be), CF and Unity offer you a lot more ways to add light-weight forestry to your course.

[aftrshok99]

@Kablammo11

That's kind of what I was thinking in the back of my mind but not using CF I wasn't sure. I just know from playing TGC that some people go apes**t when planting and I wondered how doing that would translate to playability in PG.

I sure hope when they open beta back up for CF that they include some of us that haven't designed very many courses but do have experience using programs like Unity. It's going to have a higher learning curve than GNCD, should be interesting. LOL

[Kablammo11]

All matters vegetal such as trees etc will be handled exclusively by Unity. CF does not offer any additional functionality, but it will come with a hopefully reasonable selection of beautiful tree types for you to plant... in Unity.

 

Yes, bit of a curve in Unity. But if I eventually managed, so can 99.423 % of humankind.

[aftrshok99]

All matters vegetal such as trees etc will be handled exclusively by Unity. CF does not offer any additional functionality, but it will come with a hopefully reasonable selection of beautiful tree types for you to plant... in Unity.

 

Yes, bit of a curve in Unity. But if I eventually managed, so can 99.423 % of humankind.

Yea I guess I should of broke out CF and Unity separately instead of lumping them together when talking about them.

 

But what about the other 0.577 %, they're gonna be screwed!!!!!    

[Richard]

Yea I guess I should of broke out CF and Unity separately instead of lumping them together when talking about them.

 

But what about the other 0.577 %, they're gonna be screwed!!!!!    

 

Yup, I am!!

[Kablammo11]

Video time...

This one is a bit moot and shows me building and texturising a 3D rock - and not even a beautiful one.

It's a test tut, because I intend to cover the further developments at the Black Swan in video, just to give you guys an idea of what that may be like. Also, I needed a trial run to work out the proper workflow, including recording my own voice and speaking a live commentary to the action on the screen.

 

 

My next tuts will be more to-the-point and will deal with:

• importing and placing objects into Unity
• making a seamless texture in photoshop
• painting textures on the Unity terrain
• planting grass in Unity
• shaping greens in CF/Unity
• planting tees, shot points and pins in CF and making a flyby.

 

If any of you would like to see some other aspect of this ordeal process tutted by me, just ask me here

[jazza]

Hi guys

Kablammo11...Will the importing and placing objects into unity include the importing of your own trees from images or photos? ...just like we could in Jack Nicklaus 6 and Links 2003.

I'm looking forward to using CF when it becomes available and the thought of being able to use custom made objects like trees in the game itself would be great.

[Kablammo11]

From your description I suppose you mean 2D billboards. The Black Swan will not have a single tree, but all the grasses will be made and prepared by me in Photoshop, so importing and planting grasses and low bushes is the same process as with billboard trees. I'm not sure if I should cover the Photoshop part of this, including creating an alpha mask.

The good news is that if you have old grasses, trees and bushes from APCD or JN6, and textures, for that matter, all of these should work in Unity/CF as well - and importing them is a straight forward drag-and-drop affair.

 

By objects I meant 3D models of stones, cliffs, fences etc.

And For the record, Unity has its own tree designer feature, allowing you to build tree objects that you can then import and plant. I have tried to work with it, but it's so f***ing cumbersome and the results are so poor that I abandoned this idea. Still, may be only me, so this feature, jazza, might be exactly what you want to have.

[NoPutt]

Super metamorphic igneous, or is it a sedimentary deposit from the Paleozoic era?...lol

Could you possibly add a link to the program you are using? I love the spike feature, and

it looks as though the texture editor can do individual mappings on a single object, is

this correct? I haven't seen that before, but I'm self taught and lag way behind.

Thanks for the Tut and I look forward to the next.

[Kablammo11]

here's the link: http://www.inivis.com

Caution: Wavefront objects are currently one of the few formats you can import into Unity (and that format is quite dated). Before committing to modelling, make sure your output format works. To perform a smooth import you need to place the .obj and .mtl files into one folder together with the textures and then import that folder as a whole. I'm an autodidact myself and handicapped by my Mac - there must be plenty of other apps, even freeware ones, in the Windows universe, that might be easier to handle.

And yes, there also is Blender, but honestly, whoever created that undecipherable aberration probably has moved to Steam by now - to take their sadistic and misanthropic views about user-unfriendliness to the next nevel.

 

As for the exact, geological categorisation of my rocks, give me a break. It's not basalt, because there is no basalt in the northwest corner of Ireland, only in the east and south - and that's as far as I'm willing to indulge the universe at large. I went for something like granite, but it most likely does not exist in reality... I already have Richard the Botanist giving me lectures about willows, so I could do without specialists tut-tutting my feeble grasp of rockology.

Now brace yourselves for a flood of incoming emoticons... Gonna get ugly! Go for it, Richard, or am I using reverse psy?

[Richard]

here's the link: http://www.inivis.com

Caution: Wavefront objects are currently one of the few formats you can import into Unity (and that format is quite dated). Before committing to modelling, make sure your output format works. To perform a smooth import you need to place the .obj and .mtl files into one folder together with the textures and then import that folder as a whole. I'm an autodidact myself and handicapped by my Mac - there must be plenty of other apps, even freeware ones, in the Windows universe, that might be easier to handle.

And yes, there also is Blender, but honestly, whoever created that undecipherable aberration probably has moved to Steam by now - to take their sadistic and misanthropic views about user-unfriendliness to the next nevel.

 

As for the exact, geological categorisation of my rocks, give me a break. It's not basalt, because there is no basalt in the northwest corner of Ireland, only in the east and south - and that's as far as I'm willing to indulge the universe at large. I went for something like granite, but it most likely does not exist in reality... I already have Richard the Botanist giving me lectures about willows, so I could do without specialists tut-tutting my feeble grasp of rockology.

Now brace yourselves for a flood of incoming emoticons... Gonna get ugly! Go for it, Richard, or am I using reverse psy?

 

Chris, you are in luck this time, maybe, since the 'Black Swan' is treeless. However, I feel obligated to inform you that I am currently putting the final touches on my thesis for my Doctorate degree in Geology. The subject of the thesis is 'The Properties of Rocks in Ireland'. Very timely, even if I say so myself. Therefore you should expect some advice on the subject in the near future.

 

P.S. Unless you plan on substantially 'downsizing' the object created in the video, you have not created a 'rock', but rather a 'boulder'. Just saying, and I couldn't wait for the 'near future!!