19 replies to this topic

[dpeters95]

Hey guys, just wondering...  Will a copy of Unity come with Course Forge when it's released or do we have to supply our own copy?

 

Just wondering if I should go ahead and install the Free version of Unity or wait for the Course Forge release...

[JoeF]

Download the free version now and get familiar with it.  Course Forge is an add-on utility to Unity.

[johnmeyer]

Ive been playing with 5.1.2 and recently upgraded to 5.2.3. Cant really see any difference, other than when i installed 2.3 it added a bunch of other stuff, including VS2015, which screwed up my old version of office, theres an office addin within vs15 that older versions of office dont like, so make sure you create a restore point prior to installation. I didnt but luckily the installation did create one prior to installing vs15 but after 5.2.3 so i got away with it.

[dpeters95]

@JoeF, thanks for the info.

@johnmeyer, wow, never would I have thought that Unity would have anything to do with Office! I'm really happy you cautioned me since I do have Office installed. I will certainly create a restore point before installing Unity. Thanks!

 

The current free Unity version is 5.35f1.  I'll give that a go...

[Richard]

Ive been playing with 5.1.2 and recently upgraded to 5.2.3. Cant really see any difference, other than when i installed 2.3 it added a bunch of other stuff, including VS2015, which screwed up my old version of office, theres an office addin within vs15 that older versions of office dont like, so make sure you create a restore point prior to installation. I didnt but luckily the installation did create one prior to installing vs15 but after 5.2.3 so i got away with it.

 

John, is there not a 'custom' install where you can specify which components of the download you want to install? If not, shame on Unity.

[M Rose]

I'm not using 5.2 yet so thanks for the warning.

[DPRoberts]

John, good to see you are going to get into the designing. I've been doing the same since my GC2 went in for repairs. I think it will be great to get some guys from the sim community building. You probably don't need to overthink the unity version. I have spent time learning how to build terrain, paint terrain and create textures, objects and trees. All of these tasks are somewhat similar on the unity versions. Yes, water may be different but the goal for CF when released seems to be too provide enough assets that you wouldn't have to do extra stuff unless you wanted. I would suggest learning how to manage layers and blending of textures in photoshop if you don't already. I also have used Blender to make and texture 3d objects to add some flare to your course. Awesome bump is a free tool I'm using to make normal maps as well. (can use Crazy bump if you have Mac) With Unity being such an open product, it seems every task I want to accomplish involves learning a new program. It's a bit of a choose your own adventure. In reality, the challenges for learning will be more with working with unity than CF.

[dpeters95]

Well, as a follow-up on this topic, I installed the latest free version of Unity (5.35f1).  During the installation, it does show a list of modules that will be installed if you do not uncheck the selection.  I unchecked Visual Studio 2005 and installed Unity.

 

And then sadly, I lost the ability to run any Windows Office Applications!!!  So, I then uninstalled the "G+k# for .Net 2.12.26" thinking that was the culprit, but it wasn't...  The only other item was Unity itself so I un-installed it but again, none of the Office Apps worked.  I had to run System Restore (Thanks John) to get Office back working again...

 

This is bad news for us with MS Office!  Does this mean I'll have to install Unity 5.1.2???  That is, if I can find that version now...

[Acrilix]

Well, as a follow-up on this topic, I installed the latest free version of Unity (5.35f1).  During the installation, it does show a list of modules that will be installed if you do not uncheck the selection.  I unchecked Visual Studio 2005 and installed Unity.

 

  Does this mean I'll have to install Unity 5.1.2???  That is, if I can find that version now...

 

At the moment most of the CF beta testers are using 5.1.2f because it's the newest version that works with the current CF. I expect this will change though with the next CF release.

I'm pretty sure all the older versions are still available on the Unity site to download. 

[dpeters95]

@Acrilix, yes, I just visited the site and found all the previous Unity 5 versions there.  My worry is, as you stated, the released version of CF may require a newer version of Unity than 5.1.2 

[pingzing]

Currently using Unity  5.2.3fl  with no problems 

 

Cheers

[johnmeyer]

The offending programme causing the office issue is Visual Studio. Imnthat installation there is an addin called TFC or something i think which hates old versions of office it would seem.

 

When i did my restore I was able to just restore back to a point post unity 5.2.3. and pre Visual studio and 5.2.3 works fine without it.

If you could install without Visual Studio, Office should run fine, I would think, or find a way to prevent that TFC addin from loading.

 

Thanks MPags, yeah think Ive got a handle on textures, heightmaps, elevations etc. Cheers for the normal map programme suggestion, ill look into it as i try to use one with every texture if possible.

 

What Im struggling with is fine detail within the textures, such as edging bunker lips and pathways etc, I originally had the Terrain Control Texture Resultion set too low I think, as the brush was too large for what i wanted, even when set to 1. I increased this value, not heeding the warning that it does indeed remove textures already drawn.. oops, back to the drawing board. Only done a couple of holes so far, and am trying a real course replication, using the satellite image as a template, which i then set to 0 opacity once ive overpainted it. Not sure if thats the good way to do it, but makes laying out easy

[DPRoberts]

John, what you are doing with the satellite image is what most are doing to recreate real courses. TerrainForge, the evil fraternal twin to CourseForge, in theory will bring the heightmap and satellite image together for you, one day. You may find the ShimonTools useful for some things you are trying to do. http://www.perfectpa...32-shimontools/ The ability to have fine control is the main problem with the unity terrain tools at the dimesions we are building. I believe, it stems from the number of vertices that are being drawn on your terrain heightmap and is a product of your terrain size in relation to your heightmap resolution. If you build a course by hand, it has been recommended to stay in the range of 1300x1300 with a heightmap resolution of 2049. This means you effectively have 1.58px/m or 0.63m/px. Just to experience what I mean, make a terrain of 200x200 with a resolution of 2049 and you will see how much finer control you have (0.098m/px).  You could increase your height map resolution to 4097 but most PCs will not do well with a course created at that resolution. However, all of this gets corrected with CF. CF draws meshes and you can control how many vertices end up in the mesh, giving you that fine control. The mesh draws a fine line as well to delineate off terrain such as tees, greens, fairways, rough and bunkers. Each mesh basically then has a material applied to it that contains a diffuse, shader and normal map. No painting of the meshes. The question of the value of finer control will depend on how you plan to draw your course. K11 seems to draw courses with more meshing and RobC (bandon courses) uses CF just to outline semi-rough and terrain paints the rest. In this way, K11 could deal with a larger meter/pixel resolution because he is not so dependent on unity resolution parameters. To my eye, this gives K11 courses a more carved/cleaner looker and RobCs a more rustic look. Each work well for what they are trying to accomplish. I have spent a far bit of time F5 flying around courses to see how designers are managing things. You will be able to see where they are terrain painting and where they are meshing and how they are blending those elements. My settings for a Kiawah build I am working on.

[johnmeyer]

Cheers pal, all making more sense now. Looking forward to getting hands on CF now that ive got the basics of unity well in hand. 

 

I was fortunate in that BruceMc did provide me with the height map .raw file, satellite image .jpg and terrain parameter info, so I simply had tocreate the terrain in unity, and apply the height map and image file and then i could begin "overpainting" my textures over the top, and tweaking the height map in places of course.

 

Have made a cracking striped fairway texture, and a really nice bunker sand one. My other frustration is the inability to "rotate" the texture brush, so when doing striped grass it always runs the same way, eg, North to south, so when a hole runs east to west I have to use a different texture where I have rotated the striping to match the direction of the hole. NOt a big deal but bit annoying.

[M Rose]

Yes, one of the few ways where CF has not superceded the APCD yet is in the mapping..... as one who has a preference for striped textures I find the inability to set them to my preferred direction is an annoyance. It certainly isn't a make or break thing, but I think sometimes the look suffers. It doesn't seem like it would be that difficult a feature to implement, but I don't know a thing about the programming so I can't say for sure.

 

I partially get around this problem by rotating textures manually in Photoshop and then using them as cloned textures, so I'll often have a Green 1, Green 2, Green 3 which are all the same texture except orientated in different directions. So far I have not found any problems with having multiple greens, fairways, etc... as long as all the terrain settings are correct and match each other. I usually wait until the very end of the design process to do this just in case I want to change any of the textures as if you have multiples, you'll have to change all of them.

[johnmeyer]

Yeah this is exactly how ive been going about it, glad its not just me being stupid and not working out how to do it

Would be so much better if could just "rotate" the brush, so then i could have my stripes follow the curvature of the fairway etc. As ya say, not make or break but is a shame

[dpeters95]

Currently using Unity  5.2.3fl  with no problems 
 
Cheers

Hi, I saw that you said you were using Unity 5.2.3. Do you have Office 2007 installed? If so, did you uncheck the Visual Studio box during install? Uncheck anything else? Unity, Visual Studio, Web Player and Standard Assets boxes are initially checked by default...

TIA

[dpeters95]

The offending programme causing the office issue is Visual Studio. Imnthat installation there is an addin called TFC or something i think which hates old versions of office it would seem.
 
When i did my restore I was able to just restore back to a point post unity 5.2.3. and pre Visual studio and 5.2.3 works fine without it.
If you could install without Visual Studio, Office should run fine, I would think, or find a way to prevent that TFC addin from loading.

John, in reply #8 above you'll see that I tried installing Unity 5.3.5 and unchecked Visual Studio 2015 but that still didn't work. My Office apps still would not open...

When you run the "UnityDownloadAssistant-5.3.5f1.exe" it has these folders checked by default for install:
Unity 5.3.5
Documentation
Web Player
Standard Assets
MS Visual Studio Community 2015
Windows Build Support

I don't which of those need to be installed. I assume Unity, Documentation and Standard Assets???

[johnmeyer]

I went with 5.2.3 as I think that's the latest version people using with cf, but I think on mine I just installed unity and standard assets Don't remember seeing documentation. I think there is a vs workaround for office 07 that involves vs08

It's a pain in the as all this I must admit. The joys of old office software I guess

[dpeters95]

Thanks John. No, there is no Documentation to check in 5.2.3 but there is in 5.3.5.

Anyway, I installed 5.2.3, Unity and the Standard Assets. The others I unchecked. Office Apps do still work and I ran Unity for the first time. Phew... This was the easy part!!! Now I actually have to learn how to use Unity