41 replies to this topic

[shimonko]

I've had a bit more time to test CourseForge and thought I'd share some screenshots.
 
 

 

 
 
This course is based on the Olympic Golf Club in San Francisco - the terrain is taken from LiDAR scans of the course (from plane, not satellite), sampling the elevation every 3 - 4 feet. 
 
Trees, bushes and textures are those that have been supplied with CourseForge. Actually the bushes are huge trees buried in the ground so only the crowns show.
 
The area beyond the course at the moment consists of a 360° panorama and another 8 very low resolution height-mapped terrains surrounding the main hi-res terrain as shown below, where A1 is the main terrain and B's are the surrounding.
 
I'm also considering even lower resolution C terrains as well--I think performance will be fine as to my knowledge, Unity loads in terrains as needed. My idea (at the stage) is to keep the main terrain very tight to the course to maximize its resolution, yet still be able to have the near surrounds move in true 3d during hole fly-bys or ball-cam shots. Plus I suspect it will be hard to match up a panorama with the course where trees aren't blocking the join.
 
The panorama I created from joining screenshots from Google Earth from the region together into a 360° panorama, then converting it to the cubic map system Unity uses. The orientation on the above screenshots isn't what you'll find on the course, plus you don't see as much of the landscape, but I haven't decided whether to replicate Olympic or derive from it yet (and improve on nature!).
 

 
One thing I've been doing which hopefully TerrainForge will support in the future is bringing the LiDAR data into Unity with tree elevations (the mounds below), making it easy to scale trees to their real approximate heights. Then I bring in the elevation data without the trees for my final terrain so I can nudge the trees into position. 
 
Anyway, it's all experimentation--I'll probably find the multiple terrains aren't worth the trouble. The good news is that the potential with this suite is amazing. Sadly there just isn't enough time in the day.
 
 

[Kablammo11]

Very promising.... 

[Davefevs]

Love the colours....the green colours look so inviting!

[Unique]

Awesome mate!!!

[IanD]

Looking good and like the thought regarding the sunken tree prefab... curious though surrounding the res terrains... what size terrain are you using, or are you using several?

[shimonko]

So the middle A1 terrain completely contains the course (that's a second 18 that's chopped off) and is 1210m x 1210m, with a 16 bit height map resolution of 1025x1025 and overlay texture 4096x4096.

 

I'm trying to get away with very little manual terrain sculpting (I haven't done any yet), but have a 2049x2049 heightmap ready as I suspect I may need it later (especially when it comes to thin bulkheads?). 1025 at the moment covers my elevation set (nearly perfectly).

 

The 8 surrounding 'B' terrains are also 1210m x 1210m, but with heightmaps at 257x257 @ 8 bit (as in 256 vertical levels) with a 1024x1024 overlay.

 

If the B terrains don't kill performance, I'll try the C terrains, but I'll be taking both B and C as low as I can without noticeable deterioration.

 

I know Mike is probably reading going "WTF is he doing?" but at least this documents a path not to take.

[Kablammo11]

The bulkheads are not a factor that will determine your main terrain resolution.

The question about your setup rather will be if it's worth all the effort and performance sacrifice for something that players will only catch a fleeting glimpse of at best... I noticed myself with my project how the game "glues" the players to tees, fairways and greens, with lots of environmental niceties being lost in the process. 

[hyperrodik]

I use TerrainComposer and it gives me absolutely amazing results after import. a bit expensive, but 1 of the must have assets. Beautiful work by the way!

[IanD]

Agree with K11, regarding bulkheads. They are not a major problem disguising using the settings I've displayed here and there already. However, you may very well be attempting something completely different and not at all what I'm thinking of... so this is a good excercise for all of us hoping to learn something from it.

 

I agree... I can see Mike reading this and leaning back in his chair with a deep frown on his face... lol..

[pingzing]

well done mate

thank you for your time and input, hope us novices will be able to create real courses, i hope it wont be too hard, as some have better skills than others.

 

appreciate your effort and giving us a peak at you guys are up to

 

 

thanks for the pics

[shimonko]

The hardest part I see in replicating real courses is fidelity--replicating the unique features of that course, like clubhouses, trees, breaks on greens,... And then in both fictional and real courses, the artistic finishing touches which you can see in K11 's course. 

 

I'm just using CF's pines for the time being, but to make the course Olympic I'll have to create their very distinctive, somewhat ugly dying pines.

 

But to get a good playable real course, TerrainForge requires only a few tweaks to make it easy to use for anyone. The parts of Unity needed to make a great course are quickly learnt and the documentation they've got is top class. I don't read docs unless stuck, but I think all the hiccups I have had have been covered.

 

The learning curve just explodes when you wish to create your own vegetation, panoramas, objects,... But this is great, because as years go on we're going to continue to be blown away by new courses.

[shimonko]

Bulkheads - from what I've seen of Olympic, two levels of rough seem to be adequate. So I've got one level that you can see containing the bunkers above, then Unity's terrain where the trees are (and a significant proportion of the course). 

 

It's creating bulkheads on the terrain where I was thinking I'll need a higher heightmap resolution so I can get the desired drop in as short a space as possible. Tee boxes, greens etc no problem as they are meshed. But then again, even at 2049x2049 any drop will still take about half a metre to do so, so I guess I'll have to mesh it in and hope I can match to the terrain ok. Is that what you guys have been doing? Or should I mesh more of the course?

[shimonko]

The question about your setup rather will be if it's worth all the effort and performance sacrifice for something that players will only catch a fleeting glimpse of at best... I noticed myself with my project how the game "glues" the players to tees, fairways and greens, with lots of environmental niceties being lost in the process. 

 

I mostly agree and if not for the fly-bys and ball cam I probably would have just had the terrain capture a bit more area around the course. I'd like to see that parallax effect with close mountains moving with respect to distant mountains that a skybox of course can't do. But it could end up barely noticeable and not worth it.

 

As regard to the performance sacrifice, I'm not convinced yet it will be a sacrifice with the high-res main terrain kept really tight and Unity loading in other terrains only as required. It could even be quicker.

[AndyJumbo]

Good day Golfers !

Shimonko you have done a gr8 job too, thanks for posting it,

See you guys !

[shimonko]

Thanks Andy and the others - 'Inviting' definitely tells me I'm on the right track!

[shimonko]

Some more images: 1920x1080 resolution shown on clicking image, 1280x720 versions also linked if they're too big.
 


Lots more trees to go in yet but I really want to see how performance goes in the game before I start creating too many different trees. Otherwise I'll just make a few a duplicates.  The leaves on the tree are only low resolution too -- I'll double the resolution later as well if performance allows. PP's trees in its library indeed have double the resolution of what I've used.

1280x720 version
(I just noticed big tree isn't on the ground, hence the misaligned shadow).

 
The first tee has a lot of  hedging - it was a challenge as I always try not to go too much above 2000 triangles for any model. The hedge is about 2500 now and duplicated, but again I'll prune it down if need be. 

It can't be seen on a static image, but PP have done a very nice leaf shader, so when moving around the hedge, it has a sheen that moves. Haven't got the coloring of the hedge where I want yet.



1280x720 version

 
Here are some immovable obstructions. The ball washer I modeled from a photo on David Golf's site, and the cloth was designed in Unity. It nicely blows in the wind

The bench I designed based on a high resolution 3d model I found somewhere, but significantly reduced the number of polygons it had. I also changed the design a bit and put a nice stained wood on it. 



1280x720 version

 


 
1280x720 version

[Davefevs]

On pic number 3 the background or pano or whatever it's called looks amazing. KUTGW.

[Ted_Ball]

Very nice work shimonko. I want to play that hole. ( Doesn't it look great without HUDs )

[Kablammo11]

The clouds in your skybox seem to have an aspect issue - they are squeezed too tight vertically, imo. Also, on image 3 you can easily spot that they are vertically mirrored.

There is an identical, diagonal crack on every third element of the low white wall with the hedge. Pattern repetition from UV mapping? Meh... it'll work. It's a great feature with brilliant bump mapping and/or material rendering, especially for the terracotta bricks and the composite rock ground tiles. And most importantly: Splendid colors and textures out on the course, love the brown patches in the terrain rough and the dry splotshes inside your meshes. Great Job, shimonkongratz!

[shimonko]

Thanks for the comments all. I wondered when someone would comment on the clouds - yeah they're just a quick mock-up where I mirrored and stretched the clouds to fit. I recall PP mentioned they were looking at a solution that allowed the sky to be separate from the landscape so waiting to see what happens there.

Also when moving around, Unity will curve horizontals on the skybox, such as the water line at the horizon. It's very disturbing.

The repeating crack - I'll do a version without such a noticeable repeat, but I'm thinking I like a sharper image with repeat than blurry without (and I don't want to use a bigger texture).