68 replies to this topic

[DPRoberts]

I was inspired today by RobC's Liberty National to return to the Layers Library for some tweaking. If you have not seen it yet, RobC has done some wonderful custom texturing of his course to give quite a unique feel. I venture to guess he has tweaked all areas possible within CF/Unity to achieve his masterpieces. The one area that I felt could see a smidge improvement was the mow lines. I sense he has accomplished his mow lines within his Texture 1 swatch within a photoediting program as a blended overlay layer. This is how O_FairwayCross is in the default library. To my eye, it achieves the effect but gives a more "painted on feel" versus something dynamic or organically changing with the view and lighting. I was looking for something more true to life in that the mow lines are not always visible depending on view and lighting.

​As a result, I decided to grunge up my Texture 1 swatch for grass generalities, use my Texture 2 swatch for close up detail, and place my mow lines into the Normal Map swatch. The normal map was created with Adobe and using NVidia normal map filter and placed in Texture 4 as a Texture Map (yes, heresy!). I actually have 2 different ones - one for tees/fairway and one for greens.

​I think that this accomplishes a more realistic appearance to the mow lines but also can potentially dynamically display course sloping. There may be a possibility that if done correctly it can allow players to more interactively "read a green" versus use the grid overlay. I know there is a BARE golf following that might benefit from some of this in the texturing of the course. I also think this helps us continue to progress toward a more photorealistic presentation of the courses if so desired.

​Please try and change your YouTube settings to display 720p or 1080. It is still a bit pixelated in the upload compression. However, I think it's a pretty darn neat effect. I apologize if others are already doing this and I have not seen it. I tend to stay in my own little world sometimes. I still can't figure out how to correctly embed YouTube and it was too big to upload to my Vimeo for free.

https://youtu.be/2gQ7Zbl4pw4
<iframe width="1280" height="720" src="https://www.youtube....creen></iframe>

[Mike Jones]

Wall of text makes it hard to read but I will attempt it though. Paragraphs are your friend!

[DPRoberts]

Wall of text makes it hard to read but I will attempt it though. Paragraphs are your friend!

Better? Any advice on embed of YouTube video?

[Crow357]

Wall of Text rolled a 20 and critted me for 89 hit points, but thankfully a wandering Priest happened by and healed me.

 

So, this is all to keep the mow lines from being visible close to the golfer?  Or am I still dazed from the critical hit...

Maybe a screenshot of the layers library so I can see what you've done?

[Dazmaniac]

Better? Any advice on embed of YouTube video?

 

When you paste the URL, remove the s in https and the video should embed.

 

DPR's video:-

 

[DPRoberts]

Thanks, Daz!

[DPRoberts]

Wall of Text rolled a 20 and critted me for 89 hit points, but thankfully a wandering Priest happened by and healed me.

 

So, this is all to keep the mow lines from being visible close to the golfer?  Or am I still dazed from the critical hit...

Maybe a screenshot of the layers library so I can see what you've done?

Art,

Hoping this second video may be a better display of what I think the mow line normal does for the game. I will eventually show you how I'm doing it but I wanted you to see why to even consider this idea. This next video is a small experiment. Please try and watch in fullscreen and at 720p. The first minute of the video I am going to show you several views of a putt to pin #5. I want you to think about the putt - is it uphill? downhill? left to right? right to left? double breaker? etc. After a minute or so, the green grid will come on and show you the actual break. Then, I will move around and turn the grid on and off so you can see how the lighting of the normals allow you to see the terrain sloping to a greater degree than traditional "painted on" mow lines might. It's just a thought, no idea if it has any value for anyone.
 

Now, if you couldn't handle my inability to add a paragraph without a headache, you may want to take an anti-nausea medication to handle my F5 flying around on this putt. I can always call you in a rectal Phenergan if you have trouble swallowing pills.
 

[RobC]

That's quite a cool effect DP...I might give that a go on some darker textures to see how it looks

[M Rose]

All the mow lines on my courses now are separate textures.... it's pretty nice being able to vary the types of striping by swapping them in and out and changing the tiling numbers without having to alter the underlying texture itself.
 

I just wish there were ways to have them map in multiple directions like you could in Links.

[RobC]

Just clone the fairway texture and change the direction of the mow lines....that's what I did...my mow lines all run across the fairways...if that's what you mean

[DPRoberts]

Just clone the fairway texture and change the direction of the mow lines....that's what I did...my mow lines all run across the fairways...if that's what you mean

I didn't look that close on Liberty for it but do you have noticeable seams when texture repeats? I have done 0,45,90,135 successfully. Takes a little bit of playing around in Illustrator for me as it handles patterns better than my photoshop. I never succeeded in just straight photoshop rotating but I tend to over complicate things unnecessarily.

[RobC]

I don't see any seams TBH but I usually make the texture seamless then offsett the horizontal and vertical to check

[DPRoberts]

One last thought (yea, I'm annoying sometimes) - In Unity Editor, I think we can struggle a bit to see subtle contours. For me, the shaded wireframe view just doesn't show the way things are in game, it's not detailed enough. Even if you choose not to final build with this, you may choose to design with it. If you want, you can even decrease its scale to "see more". Think of it like an "In Editor Green Grid" (shown in last pic)
 

[DPRoberts]

Small update - Just wanted to showcase a bit more of the subtlety that the mow line normal provides. As you gain distance away from a texture in Unity, there is some LOD reduction occurring of the mesh textures. With a typical "painted normal" provided in Texture 1 or 2 swatches, the texture loses its mow line characteristics. However, the presence of a mow line normal can maintain some dynamic quality to the mesh textures. It is by no means perfect and is actually not real life accurate but it is a bit of a "cheat" in my mind to maintain a visual awareness of contours. This subtleness is lost with a traditional grunge type normal. The images below are - JNPG Royal Troon Hole #1 that shows traditional texturing and Kiawah Ocean Course Hole #5 showing mow line normal texturing. Please excuse my rogue Speedtree bush that is a bit too bright. As well, my tees are probably a smidge too orange green and the putting green could use a bit of darkening but you should get the idea of the wonders of the mow line normal.
Royal Troon Green #1 and Tee #2 - No Mow line Normal


Kiawah Ocean Course Green #5 and Tee #6 - Mow Line Normal in use (yes,in game, I removed displays, ctrl-alt-u)

[Kablammo11]

Case well made. I might be interested to give this a go, but am reluctant to sacrifice my grungy normal.

 

Mr. Mike Jones, would both normal slots in the Layer Library be available for some such design mischief?

 

I seem to remember that only one of them worked at some time in the past.

 

Never mind, I'll just try it out and see for myself.

 

With a fourth normal, I could just go b/w on a 512 sized texture and do the actual scaling with the tiling.

 

Too many paragraphs? 

 

So many friends.

[DPRoberts]

It is available indeed! This may also provide a temporary solution for my rough to be rougher until we get TE. This is bad for my disease as I have been known to remain trapped in the layers library for days. You can always be counted on for the icing on the cake, K11. I knew I could eventually draw you out of hiding to help. Thanks.

[DPRoberts]

Load the boxes! 2 Textures, 2 Normals. Gorgeous! Pete Dye would be proud that we can adequately see his green tiering.

[DPRoberts]

Green - Normal 1 - grunge, Normal 2 - crosscut pattern
Fairway - Normal 1 - verticut (very narrow vertical lines), Normal 2 - large mow line normal
Hoping you guys can see the verticut! Click on image to enlarge. Looks great on my monitor. I need to stop with the CF porn shots and finish this damn course!

[Kablammo11]

I can see the verticut alright, very nice.

 

DPR, I hope what follows next will not send you back to waste your time in the Layers Library. But since this is exactly what your stunt did to me, that's a risk I'm willing to take.

 

Once you gave me confirmation that all the 4 boxes were in play, I immediately went and tried something rather different, something I had always wanted to try and had earmarked that empty fourth box for a long time ago. This:

 

 

It's quite subtle to see, but basically I went and made a copy of my detail short grass texture, Texture 2, converted that into a Normal and added it to the free slot in Normal 1 at the same tile size. This way, I hoped-fantazised, the individual blades of grass would be endowed with a bit of relief, with a fake 3D effect that would stop making them look so flatly 2D when see from close by.

 

 

And it worked, more or less. They now appear more plastic, at least to my eye. And as an added bonus they also cause a little bit of gleaming on individual grasses in the vicinity.

 

 

Of course, this is a dangerous thing to do. Imagine an end user setting his dynamic light to midday noon and this might cause a white halo to flare up around the camera. But do I care? Not really, I'm just trying stuff and see what happens.

[NoPutt]

That's the ground level shot I've been waiting for DP.

The subtleties of the green are very much in evidence

and will help the non-grid player tremendously.

 K11,  your fourth slot manipulation does seem to add

another dimension and I'm happy to see the darker

colors react as well as the light ones.