51 replies to this topic

[Mike Jones]

I always found some aspects of Links and APCD very cliquey    Was hoping PP wouldn't go the same way 

 

You are implying that the community is cliquey because you didn't get on the first beta?

[Stephen Sullivan]

Nope   Just saying that I thought Links and APCD was and hoped that PP wouldn't be the same.

[Unique]

Why is it that that my unity paint brush is square rather than round as the paint shape I select is round? Thanks.

 

Peter

[Kablammo11]

I assume you refer to a small brush size (1 to 10 or so), Peter. If so, I get that, too, at small sizes, for round brushes.

 

It's because the terrain canvas on which you want to draw your shapes is basically made out of many, many little square fields. Switch on the Textured Wireframe view mode and you'll see them - and don't let the diagonal lines fool you, they play no active role - rather focus on the square fields.

 

 

The blue speck is a round unity brush of size 1 displayed as a square. The red circle (edited in by me), shows how you expect your brush to really look. But Unity only impacts full squares - and always impacts them completely or not at all.

So the round brush is displayed as a square, because it touches 4 of them in this example. 

Don't worry about it. You have simply bumped into the smallest editable unit within Unity: The wireframe square. And note that the CourseForge meshes are independent from the terrain grid and can be drawn with a lot more precision.

[shimonko]

A round brush size one will be a square. How big that square is depends on your control texture resolution. If your terrain size is 128m x 128m and control texture resolution only 32, then , then your size 1 brush will be a 4m x 4m square.

[shimonko]

Simultaneous post! I'm glad they're in agreement.

 

The sizes of those squares shown in K11's lovely diagram are determined by the heightmap resolution.

 

If K11's terrain was 128 x 128 and had a height map resolution of 129, then there'd be a square every 1m. Only the corner points of each square can be raised or lowered to shape the terrain.

 

Lasse had issues because his 2845x2845 terrain and heightmap resolution of 2049 meant he could only raise or lower the terrain every 1.4m. That's not enough precision to embed steps into the terrain like he was attempting. Each square is comprised of two triangles and triangles by their nature are dead flat - they can't be bent.

 

It also raises a very subtle point that Mike mentioned in a video once, about starting with a low resolution height map for initial sculpting. That would have allowed Lasse to much easier match the terrain with the slope of his stairs as he'd only have to raise and lower a few points, not finesse an unmanageable number.  Same with creating a fairway with that runs off to a side - much easier to get the general fall with a low resolution heightmap.

 

Then later the heightmap can be exported, enlarged in an photoediting program and reimported at the higher resolution for the finer sculpting of mounds and valleys. 

 

And once you have the heightmap in Photoshop or whatever, then you can do things like gradient fills to get very consistent slopes.

[Kablammo11]

Yeah, I'm very relieved that we don't differ, shimonko. I could go on and point out that terrain brushes (for sculpting) are defined by heightmap to terrain dimension ratio - and texture brushes presumably by heightmap to control texture resolution ratio.

I have height map 2049 and ctr 1024, so that means a size 1 brush, for me, covers 4 ground units instead of 1. Relax, Peter, it's quite easy, it's just me not being good at explaining stuff   

[Unique]

Thanks guys, I was trying to paint textures on Murefield  but the square thing is just not helping. Anyway I did understand enough to know I'm not the problem. So I'll just keep playing until I get my hands on CF.

On a personal note, shimonko, my trip to Bonneville was postpone till later in the year  No hurry I guess

 

Peter

[M Rose]

Glad I found this thread.... I'm really struggling with Unity. I'm glad I'm not alone.... I've been convinced that I'm the only one here who was having trouble.

 

I'm finding it hard to stay motivated to work through it without an actual golf element involved. I'm debating whether or not I should do what some of the others are doing and just wait for CF to come out and have all the tools available before getting started.

 

I was a fairly late-comer to the APCD game and to the Nicklaus series before it... I would hate to miss the "prime" period again.

[scottpussehl]

When it comes to terrain control I have been fooling around in "the golf club" while I await PP and CF. Will the these two have similar way to control the shaping being both are unity. Or will CF have a better set of tools?

[Kablammo11]

Both games are based on Unity 3D, a game engine. CF is an add-on that adds golf course related funictionality to Unity 3D. Terrain shaping in CF/Unity as well as in TGC is mainly performed by using terrain brushes. 

In CF, or through the added TerrainForge, there will be the added functionality to import real life geographic data. Also, grayscale height maps can be saved, altered and imported.

 

Here are a few things you can do with CF, but can't with the GNCD of TGC:

• Import textures to customize the look of your course.
• Heck, import ANYTHING: Trees, grasses, objects, rocks, sounds, 3D meshes, skyboxes, panos...etc...
• Control the exact outline of your fairways and greens, make them wider or narrower if you want to (unlike as in TGC, the golf surfaces in CF are not painted on with a brush, but precisely drawn onto the terrain as splines, giving the designer much more diverse options to shape golf holes)
• Plant separate tees and multiple hole locations
• Have more than just one water level
• Define out-of-bounds areas and water hazards (not implemented yet, but announced)

 

I could go on. There is a small price to pay for all this additional freedom in CF, though: It is a bit more difficult to master than the GNCD.

[scottpussehl]

I think GNCD is over simplified. And this makes it more difficult to work with to make any thing how you want it