2551 replies to this topic

[Kablammo11]

I did - and admired them from afar. And many others.

First, importing them did not work, and then it says in the comment section below that they are standalone objects and can't be loaded into the tree planting engine.

 

All I have is quite measly, from the free unity terrain assets.

 

 

From left to right: Mimosa, group of crappy palm tree, single palm tree, banana plant and Banyan. Not even sure if Mimosa and Banyan can be considered indigenous plants. 

I may have to use the palm tree materials as source for new and slightly less pathetic palm tree models that I construct in the Unity tree editor. I would have liked to spare myself this unendurable torment, but I'm running out of stuff to do: The Mac bug doesn't let me play PG and my CF U5 won't let me draw splines. I'm basically stuck in a rut - or stranded in a desert. 

 

We do have a a generally unfriendly tree situation in course desgin. Bit of a week spot, but that is Unity being Unity, a DLC-besotted little tree pimp with no empathy whatsoever for cheapskates like me who just want some good tree stuff quickly and without a hassle for less than 35 USD per tree model. Oh, and also stuff that can be imported, customized and planted without an advanced degree in astrophysics...

Please donate generously to the Global Foundation for the Permanent De-Geeking and Wholesale De-Nerdification of the IT industry. Computers for all the people, not just for code-wankers.

www.techies_suck.org.

 

It's not the fault of PP, the poor darlings simply have no other choice but to lean so heavily on Unity - Why do you think my last golf course had no trees at all on it? 

[Jimbobh]

Here is one palm tree I found for free, Works as a prefab.

https://drive.google...tSm8&authuser=0

at http://animium.com/2...eed to sign up.

[Kablammo11]

Thanks, Jimbobh. I had to send you an access request, though.

New Rant... Google are bastards. Just this.

[Jimbobh]

try this one https://drive.google...iew?usp=sharing

[Kablammo11]

Most kind of you, Jim. I appreciate your efforts and thank you.

As you can easily see in the image below, your contribution is by far the bestest and handsomest palm tree so far:

 

 

Never mind that it is rotated 90 degrees in the wrong direction for no apparent reason and that the foliage, when looked at from below the tree, turns transparent (small insert). All this can be fixed somehow, just a matter of yet more workarounds or shader magic. 

This being Show & Tell, dear innocent readers, here's the deal: I spend around 20% of my time designing golf courses. 50% are dedicated to getting simple stuff like this that ought to be f...ing working without any f...ing problem to work. And 30% are spent with doing absolutely nothing, because I'm getting skullf...ed by the product development cycle. 

 

But don't worry about my frame of mind

 

[Jimbobh]

works ok if you drag it into your scene, but a hassle if there are a lot of them, I will see if I can rotate it. I also have a few more I will check out and hand over to you.

 

 

 

[Kablammo11]

Scene dragging has a few drawbacks, or so I was told: Performance, for one. Also dragged object trees don't sway in the wind (well, you could give them a wind zone and animate them manually). Thanks again. And with a few hundreds of them, tree planting certainly is preferable. 

Beautiful image! Your CF textures look a bit generic - let me know if I can help you with them.

[shimonko]

Never mind that it is rotated 90 degrees in the wrong direction for no apparent reason and that the foliage, when looked at from below the tree, turns transparent (small insert). All this can be fixed somehow, just a matter of yet more workarounds or shader magic. 

This being Show & Tell, dear innocent readers, here's the deal: I spend around 20% of my time designing golf courses. 50% are dedicated to getting simple stuff like this that ought to be f...ing working without any f...ing problem to work. And 30% are spent with doing absolutely nothing, because I'm getting skullf...ed by the product development cycle. 

 
You have jumped in the deep end remember. Would you expect someone to use the tools you use for your profession without hassles?

The tree lying down - common y-up/z-up translation problem. Some modeling apps like 3ds Max and Blender have the z-axis pointing up whereas Unity has y-axis up. Look here for some solutions.

[Kablammo11]

 
You have jumped in the deep end remember. Would you expect someone to use the tools you use for your profession without hassles?

 

I've jumped in a couple years ago, sweet friend. Call me a fool for hoping to get a foot on the ground occasionally by now. And I do not care to be a 3D design professional - if I were, chances are that I would spurn Unity and instead turn to seriously powerful and well designed game engines instead, certainly not to this mediocre piece of (insert a dozen crude and abusive swear words in this space).

Thank you for your most useful link. What a neat work-around, resulting in more work for me because somebody did not do his properly to begin with. Less and less substance, more and more work-arounds. Lovely attitude!

 

I'm off to crap out a few more rainbows.

[shimonko]

I hate to tell you but Unity is the easiest and most productive 3d game engine out there and thus dominates (by far) the releases on Steam because of this. Another popular engine, IMO the most well designed and powerful engine publicly available, will have you spending a week just learning how to get that tree into it, and that's after spending 3k on necessary apps also with lengthy learning curves. Game design is hard stuff and many seemingly unintuitive things have to be done for the sake of performance or other reasons. Unity's not my cup of tea, but PG and CF just would not exist at the stage they are now without it. You haven't the luxury of specific tuts that future CF users will have--just think of how easy some of the things you have battled with would have been with step-by-step tuts. Such tuts are being demanded by casual users of all engines and you have unrealistic expectations to cut a path through the forest without such complications.

[Jimbobh]

I managed to get this palm tree upright using Blender, so it should work fine now.(fingers crossed) lol. Just another learning curve. I only added the diffus shader and set it to "tree creator leaves" seems to look better set there, then add it to my trees for painting them on. I will let you add the rest of the stuff since I am not educated enough in that department yet, along with my texturing. I am just using the standard textures on my course, I Just darkened them a bit.

I might have a few other palm trees and a cocnut tree, and might even have a cactus. I will find them and see if they will work.

 

https://drive.google...iew?usp=sharing

 

 

 

[Keith]

Great looking course pic above Jim.  Is that based on a real course or something you created from scratch?

[Jimbobh]

That is based on a real course, (except for the palm trees). I am working on the waste bunkers trying to figure out how to make them exactly.

[Kablammo11]

Thank you again for your splendid and correctly vertical palm tree, Jimbobh.

Funny story: If I import it, load it into the tree engine and plant it, I get this:

 

 

I did of course set the material to your example that you posted, The transparency is quite evident. Also, if you look at the crown, same as previously, all views from below are invisible or clipped out. But please do not bother about it any more, it's not your job to deal with this issue and you have done a lot for me, which I do appreciate.

I think that between the two of us, and without intentional malice, we have nicely scratched the surface of what, in post 1021, I referred to as a "generally unfriendly tree situation" surrounding Unity&CF. No matter what the apologists say, I stand by this opinion. Just because a situation is not as bad as it could possibly ever be does not automatically mean that it is beyond reproach or in the least acceptable.

 

Funny enough. After quitting and restarting Unity, the trunk is now solid. But I still get unwanted transparency on the fronds when looking up at them. I will add the normal map next time when I'm out there. 

 

 

But it's quite useless to follow this avenue any further atm, Jim. Thank you for your help again, but serious planting needs extensive groundwork as a prerequisite, and since I can't do anything with my U5 CF version right now, here ends the story of Oasis Lodge for the time being.

[Jimbobh]

Not a problem, Some things bug me until I get it fixed. lol. I did notice the tree top problem but ony after I sent the file, so I spent some more time on it and finally got it figured out. I will explain now so I don't forget.

Create a folder in Unity asset folder called Ambient-Occlusion
Import your fbx into that folder.

Click on the prefab.

From the shader dropdown select Nature and then Tree Soft Occlusion Leaves.

Drag the Diffus shader to there.  You may have to reimport the prefab after that if something doesn't look right.

You can then add it to your trees.

 I also worked on the cocnut tree, that one gave me a little trouble but I got it to work

 

 

Time to go to my regular job.

 

 

 

[NoPutt]

Beautiful Jim

Oh, and K, wish I could help with your CF/Unity woes

as this needs to be corrected at all cost. As I have 

no tech savvy, all I can offer is an old recipe,

"Put the Lime in the Coconut"

[Kablammo11]

Your best wishes are plenty enough, NoPutt (Yes, I remember your first name from the private Forums but won't use it without your explicit permission in public). The fact that you had to made a post without a single pun included is dramatic proof that you must have fought the tears while typing it - and how deeply my woes are perturbing you. I'm touched.

 

As for you, Jim, you will be rewarded the K11 medal of Honorable Conduct for going above and beyond the call of duty. It would be downright rude of me not to confirm to you the safe arrival of your palm tree on the Oasis premises, and I shall come to that soon, after yet another jab at Unity for being cleverly stupid and having no sense of compassion when it comes down to folder structures. I do remember a similar ambient occlusion incident, I must confess, from way back in my Willow Heath days, but have of course forgotten about that particular instance of practical pigheadedness since.

 

Well, the palm tree finally stands tall on my grounds:

 

 

A bit too tall, actually. For others downloading and importing it, I had to resize it from 1 down to 0.32 in object scale. No biggie. 

 

 

First look at the 9th green, belonging to a 210y par 3. I put in a few palms, and be it just to show that arboreal monoculture quickly creates a rather disturbing copy-pasted impression of the same tree several times over, as opposed to different trees. Even with the random rotation box ticked. I will need a lot more palm trees of all sizes, including the short stubbly ones barely sticking out of the ground. But soft now: This can wait. And it will.

[NoPutt]

 NoPutt (Yes, I remember your first name from the private Forums but won't use it without your explicit permission in public). 

You are welcome to call me anything but late for supper.

D. (Neal) , the D is Davy after Davy Crockett  with whom

I share no ancestry but do share bloodlines of Irish,English,

Scottish, and French. How Mr. Crockett's lineage is so mixed

I have know idea except that in our day we were,

"King of the Wild Frontier".

[Kablammo11]

Major turbulences in my course design universe, due to Unity deciding to regress their engine to version 5 and having the cheek to call this an upgrade. CF5 was installed and made to work by having to start from scratch - this bodes quite ill for the Black Swan, which would be fully operational and available for your patronage by now, were it not for those vicious bastards kind souls from Crapity Unity who thought the world needed their latest chunk of excrement work of art and beauty.

 

Anways, Oasis Lodge has re-begun. It's a whimsical, weak little beginning as far as beginnings go, but still...

 

 

That's the landing area of the 1st green, a 475y par4 hole uphill. Small greens on this course, not longer than 20y on their widest part. Of course, at this early stage it's not about building on a grand scale (elevations have not been sculpted yet), but bringing in textures and setting up a first color scheme that will suit the initial concept of a tourist resort course around a waterhole in the Kalahri Kalahari (just a little bit off the Okavango Delta)

 

[highfade]

Did you say Karl Ahari?