68 replies to this topic

[DPRoberts]

K11, that is precisely what I am hoping for on my rough and first cut. I have promised myself only course building the rest of the weekend so I will return to the library at a later date. I feel the closely mowed (mown?) areas (fairways, tees and greens) may appear too raised with such an effect. However, the longer blades of grass reaching up for the sun would surely reflect the light. I know we are in the infancy of the library tweaks on this so it should only improve as we go. I see you have moved on from the long standing noise generated up close texture. Your blades of grass look much nicer. Hopefully, the current recommendation on the user created courses of Dynamic Light OFF is being followed. It does not like my user generated 3D objects as well. Not sure if it means I need to be supplying lightmaps but this is something I currently know little about. More tangents than friends here, which is probably appropriate for a thread on normals.

[Kablammo11]

Hehe. I have my doubts whether this would work on the longer grass, it's too voluminous for this technique to look credible - only on the very short grasses can normals create a bit of a difference imo. And we should one day get TE for the longer ones anyway. Then again, worth a shot.

I'm not sure if your default green detail texture is noise generated. But I find it a bit sub-otpimal, so I have never used it and designed this instead:

 

 

I usually tile it at 1.2 to 1.4 for greens and 1.6 to 2 for fairways and tee zones.

[StoneComet]

Uhhh...slow down, I can't keep up. Now you've given me something else to obsess over, although the NJ solution was easy enough to implement once I wrapped my head around it. Swatches, tiling and some other terms I'll have to decipher. At any rate, great work and sharing. I'll have to mull this over and experiment in my next project.

 

Cheers,

 

SC       

[DPRoberts]

Thanks for the texture. Some day it would be nice to see how you generate those. Any texture I build, I use render clouds or noise or art filters so as to maintain proper tiling as they are more "procedurally" created. It's like you have supplied a detail brush and asked for that to be procedurally placed. Well done.

[Kablammo11]

It's like you have supplied a detail brush and asked for that to be procedurally placed. Well done.

 

 

 

 

Nope. Google Images for base image, then Photoshop, multiple layers, collage, filters, buckets of ellbow grease dispensed through a graphics pen and a bit of savoir-faire.

 

I could make a tutorial, but most viewers would balk at the idea of using Photoshop  (Can we use Gimp instead? Yes! Is Gimp free? FOR THE MILIONTH TIME: F..K YES IT IS!!!) and also many here feel that they are above filthy graphics grunt work in the steaming underbelly of course design ("Dude, can I have yours, lol?  This is a sharing community, dude, c'mon and share with me, I have a rich inner life but suck at graphics, lol, so I can't be bothered but surely there is nothing wrong with mooching from you. What, give something of mine back? That ain't sharing. Sharing is when you deliver to me and I return zilch). So sod them.

(On an aside, Photoshop is perhaps the most fascinating computer game out there, I have used it for nigh 30 years and still discover new ways of doing things with it...)

 

Besides, I fear it would require a dozen tutorials to make that original tutorial understandable in the first place, with an extra level of 50 basic Photoshop sub-tutorials below. So many that our good friend StoneComet would set a new world record for most emojis placed in a single post. And of course that horror must never come to pass, not if I can help it. 

[DPRoberts]

Cool. It appears your approach is similar. Constant tweaking of layers. Just wanted to make sure I hadn't missed a nice trick. I have been using Photoshop for 17 years and agree there is always something new to learn. I very much think the "teach a man to fish" approach is the best for us to create something new and exciting. It's why I prefer this over the other golf program whose name should not be mentioned.

[StoneComet]

Kablammo 11,

 

Why are you so irascible?

 

SC

 

With no emoji it's up to you now to figure out how serious that question really is coming from me. If you care to try that is.

[DPRoberts]

The Battle of Wits has begun! You have no idea how ironic your post is SC. Must be the Super Moon!

[Kablammo11]

StoneComet, I love you in the abstract way my humanist persuasion imposes on me the duty to love mankind and to respect my next man, every one of them, no matter what. I also detest emojis with incandescent fervour and consider them to be devils tool to corrupt mankind and to end all creation. Also I find usage of these atrocities to be uncouth and rude, leading me to ask you in return why you are so irascible with me?

If you want to convey the degree of seriousness behind your words, kindly write it down between the lines, where it belongs. But please do not use these facile and treacherous bumper stickers by idiots for idiots. They are painfully and literally in-human.

You can do better than that. You deserve to be better than that. I love you. But only conceptually.

[Kablammo11]

But back to the topic at hand. I implemented grass blade normals as described further above on my tees, fairways and greens, then proceeded to go and find out how they looked inside the game. Well.... let's say it depends.

If you get too close to the ground, you are bound to spot some oddities:

 

 

Then again, stand just a bit further back and the disturbing details will get swallowed up between the pixels:

 

 

And you will end up with a 2D surface that tries very, very hard to not look like it. Depending on the angle of the light, this method creates odd sparkly bits and adds a light sheen to certain patches in the middle distance.

 

Perhaps turn down the normal strength a bit and posterise the normal in photoshop to reduce it to 6 or 8 grayscale values to force its pixels into a bit more uniformity? Mayhap the softest of blurs?

Meh, I'm not convinced at all that this particular trick is either essential or enriching. But from idle folly quite often greatness springs... not. So I will keep investigating.

 

Commenters, writing lol without laughing out loudly is telling a blatant lie. Writing it while also laughing out loudly is a damning confession of a very simplistic mind. So please don't.

[Trath]

www.lolcats.com

 

Combines memes with kittens, what's not to like? I hope you enjoy!

[NoPutt]

Not sure why players would want to be that

close until we get a Camilo Villegas animation;

the second capture looks very good, and probably

looks even better under normal play. All in all

an exceptional simulated 2 1/2D grass.

 I sometimes favor the simplistic/childlike mind

over the technical/rational mind, but , I am not

laughing out loud, nor will I type the 3 letters

you abhor, so I'll just use yours, >>>>>>>Ka-Boom!

You're right, that didn't feel simplistic at all.          

[DPRoberts]

Alright, I lied. It's what all addicts do. It's part of the process. Hopefully, I will not be left behind in the Trump regime. I am sure a quality expenditure could be made toward the - "Layers Library Compulsively Tweaking affective Disorder Society." (LLCTaDS) We/me/I am an entity in need.

K11 is busy messing about with the fairways, greens and tees. I, of course, felt compelled to head in the other direction. I think my greens, fairways and tees are making do with a finely placed old "grassnrm" detail texture, verticut and mow line normals. However, I needed more "gruff" to my firstcut and rough. I thought the k11 detail and iterations of that for my normal would do quite nicely.

Early tweaking results below. Please click images to enlarge.





The firstcut is a Traditional 4 panel LL fill.


The rough is a 4 panel LL fill with a render cloud mask blurred normal in Normal 1 - K11 detail texture with a mask applied, then Render>Clouds for the mask, converted to Normal in Photoshop with NVIDIA Normal Filter, placed in Normal 1 as a texture. This is likely OVERKILL. It is a subtle change. My thought was I wanted the firstcut to constantly "gleam" which it does quite nicely and I wanted the rough to "intermittently gleam". The trickery in my head is that a closely mown firstcut bounces light fairly uniformly giving it a nice plush appearance. The rough is ragged and trampled and should only shine with the blades standing up or maybe laying down. Who knows? Like I said, until there is funding or change, I may be left behind. Hopefully, the PP community benefits a bit from my issues.

[DPRoberts]

Forgot the obligatory Villegas view for NoPutt. However, I am more excited about what is going on 8-10 feet behind the player. When I play, I don't often zoom to the worm's eye view. You guys will have to let me know the value of the upclose views in the course of normal play.

[NoPutt]

The pics in post #33 are fabulous and a fantastic

presentation of the amazing virtues of PS/CFL.

The berber carpet like seams in the first pic and 

in the foreground of the second, has me puzzled.

I think I've seen this on greens that were rolled,

but don't recall seeing it on a fairway, please

enlighten me on this Effect.

Now for the distant texture in the last pic, that is an

incredible piece of turf my friend. It gives me the feeling

of being the first player on the tee, and witnessing the

fresh early morning dew. (does not insert emoji here).

[DPRoberts]

I introduced the verticut (berber, corduroy pattern) in post #18 for fun, variety and uniqueness. Maybe to inspire someone else to do something creative. With a 4 texture layer library, I can now run quite an interesting combination for each layer. Some may share normals but in different sizes and strengths.

In real life, I actually notice verticut on some greens. However, my thought was that Kiawah is probably grown on man made piles of dirt/sand mixture. Pete Dye's wife Alice encouraged him to have the course raised somewhat last minute to make the ocean views more scenic. I imagine they have to do a fair bit of manicuring to maintain their plush fairways in the presence of the harsher climate being now exposed to the wind along the ocean. Maybe the verticut is something in their bag of tricks to accomplish this goal. My images are 3 weeks after the last round of verticutting.

Enjoy this small informational on the "verti-cut"

[StoneComet]

StoneComet, I love you in the abstract way my humanist persuasion imposes on me the duty to love mankind and to respect my next man, every one of them, no matter what. I also detest emojis with incandescent fervour and consider them to be devils tool to corrupt mankind and to end all creation. Also I find usage of these atrocities to be uncouth and rude, leading me to ask you in return why you are so irascible with me?

If you want to convey the degree of seriousness behind your words, kindly write it down between the lines, where it belongs. But please do not use these facile and treacherous bumper stickers by idiots for idiots. They are painfully and literally in-human.

You can do better than that. You deserve to be better than that. I love you. But only conceptually.

 

 

Meh...  

 

Or...

 

Hello Kablammo11,

 

The vicissitude of my irascibility is subject to my current state of mind which correlates greatly with my current outlook on my fellow human beings and also greatly dependent on the current stimuli of my environment. I too have the altruistic nature to love my fellow human beings in a very real sense. It is not conceptual at all, otherwise I would not care about a great many things nor would some of the behaviors I observe drive me to a prolonged state of irascibility at times.

 

Being aware of these conditions and reactions allows me to exert some modicum of restraint and self control. My apologies for being the instigator of the name calling, namely calling you irascible if even in an attempt to banter. The emergence of the emoticon I resisted mightily for many years. These quaint little things used to drive me to distraction as I prefer the actual use of the common language as expressively as possible. Do not even get me started with laugh out loud and other shortened forms of expression. Do not get me wrong I use them but rarely.  To place things in perspective I prefer to be verbose to the point of too long did not read in many cases during my forum experiences. I even prefer in most cases not to use contractions. I also do not understand Twitter. I mean we are not a bunch of birds are we. Seems to me we have enough difficulty communicating as it is without limiting ourselves to a very small amount of characters to convey our meaning. Emergency and dire situations being the exception to my proclivity for extended self expression.

 

The emoji, which I usually reserve for short text messaging (something I only use as a necessity with very close friends and relatives), I consider something slightly different. Anything that is not a facial expression or facial innuendo I consider an emoji. The emoticon however is something I have found to be useful in the forum arena in order to explicitly convey any emotional component so that no one is confused as to my meaning when the conditions appear to require it. I do not even enjoy talking on the phone much as I cannot see expressions and sometimes mistake the tone of what is being said. Conversely, I usually sound very subdued during telecommunications to the point that I get asked what is wrong most of the time when nothing is really amiss.

 

On the other hand I also find that conciseness has it's place. At some point being overly verbose also has it's drawbacks. Ask any renowned philosopher. I actually dabble in two opposing arenas of the written word. One being philosophy and the other being poetry. Mind you I am unpublished and rarely share my writings with anyone. Perhaps one day. I guess what I am saying is, do not let my use of the emoticon or the emoji to distract or confuse you. I am quite capable of expressing myself at great length and with great clarity if I so chose. Alas, lately I find myself acquiescing to these odd and disturbing ways of communicating. I seem to find them more and more within my written forum and text communications. Most likely out of some sense of conformity to the norm.

 

We are however getting far off track of the original intent of this thread. The lengthy posts about things I am just beginning to understand can be confusing and overwhelming at first. But it would be even more confusing if the posts where shorter. I am following the conversation as far as I can and appreciate the discussion. In any event, you will notice that in most cases my use of the emoticon is reserved for the end of my communication after my farewell signature which has devolved from StoneComet to SC. I use this shortened version of my signature so as not to irritate too many, as I am pretty sure simply the fact that I feel compelled to sign my posts even though everyone already knows who is posting irritates some forum members.

 

Sincerely,

 

StoneComet (happy face expression)

[Kablammo11]

I salute you SC. And I thank you ever so much for indulging my peeves in your last post. Myself, I'd rather decipher a wall of text than staring at cretinous pixel clusters - and whoever has a TL;DR problem with that does not even deserve my pity.

 

Keeping it pithy, though, how come that my initial, not at all sincerely meant jab at too many emoticons/emojis made you think that I was irascible or in any way angry at you for using them? I do have a bit of a reputation around here for being an conceited, elitist, emoji-loathing, lol-despising, kitten-stangling, smug continental European, non-english native-speaking, maliciously provocative bastard - a persona I do cultivate, true, in a bit of a role-playing spirit and in order to hide my true identity from the world. It's not at all fun being the real me, but being K11 does have its moments - apologies if you were not on board with this and if I wrongly presumed you were. 

 

Anyway, bottom line: This is all a lot of ado about pretty much nothing. But worth while nevertheless, because thanks to your contribution and insistence this has turned into an interesting and exceptional nothing superior to the mediocre, tedious nothings of normal mainstream life.

 

As for the normal map topic at hand: Nice work, guys. Neal, are you going to keep playing the cheerleader or will you get your hands dirty in your Layers Library to regale us with some crazy experiments of yours? Dazzle us and I'll reward you with a special, dedicated fake Tara autograph.

[NoPutt]

I introduced the verticut (berber, corduroy pattern) in post #18 for fun, variety and uniqueness. Maybe to inspire someone else to do something creative. With a 4 texture layer library, I can now run quite an interesting combination for each layer. Some may share normals but in different sizes and strengths.

In real life, I actually notice verticut on some greens. However, my thought was that Kiawah is probably grown on man made piles of dirt/sand mixture. Pete Dye's wife Alice encouraged him to have the course raised somewhat last minute to make the ocean views more scenic. I imagine they have to do a fair bit of manicuring to maintain their plush fairways in the presence of the harsher climate being now exposed to the wind along the ocean. Maybe the verticut is something in their bag of tricks to accomplish this goal. My images are 3 weeks after the last round of verticutting.

Enjoy this small informational on the "verti-cut"

Ahh, now I get it; knew there had to be a wife involved.

Which brings us back to the Cassandra Syndrome.

(inserts antisocial non-laughing emoji).

[NoPutt]

I salute you SC. And I thank you ever so much for indulging my peeves in your last post. Myself, I'd rather decipher a wall of text than staring at cretinous pixel clusters - and whoever has a TL;DR problem with that does not even deserve my pity.

 

Keeping it pithy, though, how come that my initial, not at all sincerely meant jab at too many emoticons/emojis made you think that I was irascible or in any way angry at you for using them? I do have a bit of a reputation around here for being an conceited, elitist, emoji-loathing, lol-despising, kitten-stangling, smug continental European, non-english native-speaking, maliciously provocative bastard - a persona I do cultivate, true, in a bit of a role-playing spirit and in order to hide my true identity from the world. It's not at all fun being the real me, but being K11 does have its moments - apologies if you were not on board with this and if I wrongly presumed you were. 

 

Anyway, bottom line: This is all a lot of ado about pretty much nothing. But worth while nevertheless, because thanks to your contribution and insistence this has turned into an interesting and exceptional ado far beyond the mediocre tedium of normal mainstream life.

 

As for the normal map topic at hand: Nice work, guys. Neal, are you going to keep playing the cheerleader or will you get your hands dirty in your Layers Library to regale us with some crazy experiments of yours? Dazzle us and I'll reward you with a special, dedicated fake Tara autograph.

I am quite familiar with being on the sideline. I was a Tail-Back in High School;

every time I got off the bench the coach said, "Get your Tail-Back here!!".

 

   You are right though, I have been neglecting the CFL, but after being publicly

taunted, I'll dust off my old school spirit and FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!.

     Forget the Tara autograph, I still have my tokens to see her in the

Desert Oasis Lounge, when and if it opens.