2551 replies to this topic

[Kablammo11]

The tut-tutting hip stance now? Don't give me attitude, Ian!   

 

As much as I loathe the notion of having to buy happiness from the 3D pimps over at Unity, that water simply must show some reflections, sooner or later, no matter how!   

[axe360]

Just curious, when you say Bulkheads, is that just another word for Structures? Never heard the word bulkheads before...

[IanD]

It's usually a term used on ships.. but it's basically a dividing wall. So, in this sense, it's retaining one texture at one height and on the other other side, another at a different height..

[axe360]

Thanks IanD.

[highfade]

This might still turn into a course. My Unity textures are a mess especially in the top view so it needs to be redone. Thanks for the flag Gary.

 

 

 

[Kablammo11]

"Sorry, this person moved or deleted this image" - photobucket

 

But I saw the pictures by following the links to your photobucket account. This should turn into a course. 

[axe360]

Looking very nice Highfade, when do you think PP will give you a working game, Like they gave Brian and Steve, so you can really test your course out? 

 

Speaking of Brian and Steve, what happened?

[KenR]

Nicely done, that pin position looks tough to get to.

[Kablammo11]

So, what have I been up to these last two days? Well… rocks and stones. A fabulous specialty!

 

But before I could go and place some rocks inside my project, I needed to make a few of them. So I went and created them. Here's one:

 

 

Alright, now don't get upset… Nobody said you had to make your rocks yourself. Firstly, this is a crummy rock anyhow. Secondly, all you lucky bastards will get sets of PP rocks ready-to-use with the Forge. I'm just a lowly private beta tester, I don't get any rocks. I could have asked for them, but I don't like asking, so I made 5 rocks myself. Here's the lot of them, waiting to spring into inaction at my behest:

 

 

Well, those of you who don't have any rocks and who would be grateful for any sort of rock, you can have these. "Sharing", after all is my middle n… wait, it's not. But further down the line I might want to get your stuff, so I better set a precedent and let you get mine. If you want those rocks, hit the orange letters that follow...

 

Click here to get them!

(***Short Unity loading instruction at the bottom of this post)

Please let me know if the link works or not

 

But first let me try to educate you. Once the rocks are inside Unity and your project, you can grab them, move them around, make them smaller or larger, stretch them a squeeze them (within reason). And since rocks are spherical affairs, you can rotate them in any direction you like, so that these 5 rocks can be used all over your golf course and still not look like always just the same 5 rocks.

 

 

Now this is were a HUGE lesson awaits for y'all to learn. Each of my rocks can be treated as a "Prefab" (remember that word, you will hear it a lot). My red brick bulkheads the other days: Prefabs. A prefab, short for "prefabricated" is a single object that can have more than just one instance. Look at this:

 

 

It's my Unity hierarchy window showing the five stonesA to E as Prefab folders. To create a new rock, I simply duplicate (yes, command-d) one of the g0 instances (named that way because I'm too lazy to label all my files, so Unity puts in g0). This give me a new rock to move, handle and place in my scene. Once my 5 rocks have been imported, I can quickly duplicate a few 100s of them more into my scene and place them anywhere I want. I could, for instance, group them into cluster:

 

 

Or I can place a little rock and grass island in awkward places. This is the only time during the entire process when I had to use the CF to adjust the rough meshes. Everything else is 100% Unity.

 

 

And that means that all of you don't need CourseForge to start learning how to import and multiply and position Prefabs. It's a very basic little thing you will need to use a lot.

 

 

Not only for rocks, but for all the other multiple objects a golf course will need: Tee markers, water hazard markers, ball cleaners, benches, buildings, bridges, fences, bulkheads, rain shelters. All these will be prefabs.

Below, meet the 332yd par4 5th. The more distant fairway section is easiyl in reach from the back tees, but stray shots will get blocked by strong natural defences left and right and end up in deep trouble.

 

 

So, all of you waiting for CF, allow me to strongly recommend that you acquaint yourselves with prefabs. Import my rocks - or anyother 3D object of your choosing, and start getting used to duplicating it into the landscape, moving it, resizing it, stretching it and rotating it.

Or don't. Up to you.

 

 

*Those who did download my rock folder and don't know what to do with it.

- Unzip the folder, rename it how you want and save where you need on your HD.

- Drag the entire folder into the Unity Asset Window. You will see it appear.

- Open the folder (doubleclick on it), grab one the 5 stones and drag it into the viewer. You will see the stone appear in your scene.

- Also, the Prefab object automatically pops up in the hiearchy window. Unity colors every item in there that can be used as a Prefab in the color BLUE. Open the prefab folder to find the g0 instance, duplicate at will.

- Customization: Click on the texture jpg to open it in the inspector. Increase the anisotropic value to 3 or 4 and select 16bit colors (It'll look better)

- Make sure to change the stone material to bumped diffuse and add the bump map texture. Set bumpiness to hard, 0.012, see what happens, find your preferred amount of bump.

- If you don't like the texture, click on the texture to open it in Photoshop (or Gimp) - you can color adjust the existing texture or paste any other seamless rock texture of it. Or a foto of your mother-in-law… The moment you save your changes, they will also be implemented within Unity. 

 

Questions? I'm here all week.

[IanD]

Top man K11... and hopefully beginning this community spirit that will be needed in terms of sharing. Hopefully many will embrace this aspect and help others to go on and create courses everyone will enjoy..

[shimonko]

Nice. Something worth mentioning is that you can define your rocks as detail meshes in the terrain painting tools, and paint them at different densities at random sizes and orientations.

 

You also mentioned the other day you weren't happy with your psychedelic grasses. If you create a simple mesh like below to accept your grass textures, you no longer get your grass clumps always facing the camera (i.e. billboarding). Again these meshes can be painted at random sizes and orientations as "detail meshes". 

 

[Kablammo11]

Everything you write is true and correct, shimonko. Thank you.

I figured, rightly or wrongly, that the larger signature rocks should rather be prefabs - of which I can control every aspect - and that the smaller pebbles etc would be added as detail meshes. (later on) Mr. M. Jones, feel free to stick your head in any time and set me straight if I'm wrong.

 

Yes, the detail mesh grass is one more specialty I have yet to visit. Or rather, re-visit. I have tried, in the past, to build a few grass detail objects, mostly in a triangular or hexagonal pattern, but blatantly failed at importing them into Unity and painting them on with my brush. I can import them as prefabs alright, but when I want to load them into the terrain grass engine, I get nothing. There is either something wrong with my models, or with my texture settings, or I have not found the right folder (ambient occlusion???) to put them in. Also, I must make Wavefront objs instead of fbx's. Perhaps that also hurts me.

 

 

What I'm looking for is something that looks from both afar and up close like swaying fields of wild wheat, dry and golden, a vision of true horror to any golfer who just discovered he has no spare balls left in his bag. If I could find such a wonderful grass and a good method to apply it, I would cover large swaths of terrain with these fields (Merion 2013). Any form of help is greatly appreciated. 

 

Shimonko - or anybody else - feel free to step in front of class for your own Show & Tell about interesting aspects of Unity, like highfade does. I could do with a break. Also, it shouldn't just be only me being visible all the time.

[JoeF]

Must....resist.....temptation.....  

Can't.....hold.....back.....

Rock on, K11, rock on

[garynorman]

I have created some fences.  The file can downloaded here.  Once it's unzipped, you should be able to import it as a package (hopefully!)

 

[Kablammo11]

Great little file, gary. They worked as planned. Very versatile, each column and plank adjustable. I tried them on for size at the back of the 3rd tee

 

 

…but they keep collapsing on me. Very shoddy carpentry, I'm afraid. Either that, or old Mr. Millard, our part-time greenskeeper, is back on the booze again. Sigh… poor guy…. Tara warned me this might happen, you know...

 

 

Thank you so much for this.

[garynorman]

Oops, I forgot to render the nails...  Sorry about that

[IanD]

Great stuff lol...

[Davefevs]

K11 - where can we download your little world of golf course characters? Are they just in your head or are they real (in your head)? ;-)

Cracks me up, as soon as I saw your broken planks, I was already thinking - is Tara the green keeper too....but I then get an intro to Mr Millard!

[shimonko]

Liking the color of your bunker sand too.

Next time I get a chance I'll make a tut on painting with detail meshes.

[Unique]

Thanks for sharing K11 and Gary

 

Peter