56 replies to this topic

[Acrilix]

At the moment, until we get our hands on all the tools, it is impossible to know quite what will and will not be possible. From what I've seen myself so far, my main concern is the lack of fine control over verts. In APCD, a lot of 3D work is created from terrain. This looks impossible in Unity, and I imagine everything is going to have to be constructed and then imported from other programs. This is not necessarily a bad thing, just more to learn.

It is obviously possible to create fantastic terrain to use in Unity, I'm just not so sure that it can be easily done from within the Unity program itself. Everything that PP have shown so far (apart from the hole creation demo) seems to have been created using imported data.

Mike mentions 5 minutes of work to get to the Course Forge stuff, but that is by importing an APCD mesh that has taken many, many hours to create. Creating a terrain from scratch is going to take considerably longer. Using Bing map data is going to leave an awful lot of work to be done, too, with just a few brushes. The example of creating a par 3 hole in 10 minutes was inspiring, but designing a complete course this way, without first pre-planning the terrain could lead to a lot of design issues for some.

I think the Course Forge is very exciting, especially for new designers. They will be able to select what they want from existing libraries, and produce a nice looking course pretty quickly. I just hope that there is still scope for the more intricate work required by the more seasoned designers too.

[Davefevs]

Nope thats incorrect, the libraries are for CourseForge to help in the design process. Once you build your course, everything people need to be able to play it is saved and highly compressed in the course file.

@Mike - roughly what file size of your recreations in CF as opposed to APCD? Is there much difference?

[Dazmaniac]

Gary,

 

My post wasn't aimed at you, so don't take it personally and I wasn't making any reference to your question about bunkering as I don't know what the CF will be capable of as far as pot bunkers are concerned. I was talking more of the CF in general. A lot of folks seem to be making out CF will be so easy to use, mainly because MJ more or less created a Par 3 hole in 15 minutes from scratch. He can, he has hours of experience using tools like this..... it was his day job after all, lol.

 

I'm sure you have skills in using certain course design tools and I hope you are able to import your terrain and press a few buttons and it's all done. If that is the case we'll be seeing designers churning out half a dozen courses a week, lol.

 

From just playing around with Unity itself shows that isn't the case, and CF is basically a layer on top of Unity. I'm sure it will come with many bells and whistles and be a thorough piece of kit, I'd expect nothing less of MJ and AJ. I have no intimate knowledge of the product, only what I have seen and read. I just don't think novices who struggled with APCD (and that includes me) are suddenly going to become overnight course designers at the drop of a hat.

 

[Dazmaniac]

@Mike - roughly what file size of your recreations in CF as opposed to APCD? Is there much difference?

 

To expand on Dave's question. In AJ's latest video, when he manipulates the .jpg overhead for the Kapalua import, it appeared the .jpg was over 40MB in size. This is obviously used in the CF to overlay the heighmap to aid with the actual laying out of the tees, holes, bunkers etc. when the course file is saved, will this .jpg remain part of the file or do we have to manually remove it before validating and saving the final course file.

 

I'm only curious as it seems if it is left in, the course file size is going to be fairly large already, due to the filesize of the .jpg overlay.

 

[Mike Jones]

The largest file we have had for a course up to this point was Augusta and that was something like 120mb If I remember correctly - this had, as you can imagine a lot more stuff in it than your average course.

[Davefevs]

As a complete noob, I don't expect to be able to create Mike Jones standard courses, but I get the impression that I could create something resembling my local. I doubt it's first, second etc carnation would be good enough to release to the masses, but over time it would be nice to think that it would be something I could be proud of.

[Dazmaniac]

The largest file we have had for a course up to this point was Augusta and that was something like 120mb If I remember correctly - this had, as you can imagine a lot more stuff in it than your average course.

That sounds promising. Some of the more recent Links Hi-Res releases were even bigger file sizes than the CF Augusta National.

 

My worry was because of the level of detail available in Unity/CF the course files might drift up to 250MB/300MB, lol, but this would seem that if any of them do, it will be more the minority than the majority.

 

[Mike Jones]

 

[Andrew]

There is a big difference between the course file as you are working on it and the course file we export from Unity for use in any of our applications.  For example the Course Forge working file for Augusta was around 4.5Gig but as MJ said the actual course file for use in the game or broadcast suite was only 120MB

[Dazmaniac]

There is a big difference between the course file as you are working on it and the course file we export from Unity for use in any of our applications.  For example the Course Forge working file for Augusta was around 4.5Gig but as MJ said the actual course file for use in the game or broadcast suite was only 120MB

 

       

 

[Davefevs]

@daz - you appear to have gone emoticon-crazy tonight! Too many orange smarties?????

[Acrilix]

There is a big difference between the course file as you are working on it and the course file we export from Unity for use in any of our applications.  For example the Course Forge working file for Augusta was around 4.5Gig but as MJ said the actual course file for use in the game or broadcast suite was only 120MB

 

 

It doesn't look like we'll be keeping many backups then!

Are designers going to need a large amount of RAM to work with projects in Course Forge then?

[Mike Jones]

The way Unity works is that everything that is in your scene/courses ends up in a project folder which is why it can get quite large, 4 gig is enough RAM for unity although I noticed a general improvement with 8. Memory is quite inexpensive now though on PC's at least. 

[Acrilix]

The way Unity works is that everything that is in your scene/courses ends up in a project folder which is why it can get quite large, 4 gig is enough RAM for unity although I noticed a general improvement with 8. Memory is quite inexpensive now though on PC's at least. 

 

I have 8Gb, and a pretty fast Intel i7, so all should be fine for me then.

[Dazmaniac]

I have 8Gb, and a pretty fast Intel i7, so all should be fine for me then.

 

I knew there was a reason I built my PC with 12GB RAM and an Intel i7 CPU all those months ago, lol.

 

[TheLighterDark]

I knew there was a reason I built my PC with 12GB RAM and an Intel i7 CPU all those months ago, lol.

 

Yep. Me too. looks like we're all set for CF's release.

[axe360]

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[axe360]

Nope thats incorrect, the libraries are for CourseForge to help in the design process. Once you build your course, everything people need to be able to play it is saved and highly compressed in the course file.

 

Sometimes I love it when I'm wrong! That sounds pretty cool Mike...

[Bluenoser]

It's amazing how much things get taken out of context.

 

I never said Corse Forge was going to be easy.

 

I said, based on what I saw in videos and heard, that seam blending would be easier in Corse Forge than in APCD.

 

Saying a task is easier to do with one tool than another does not equate to saying the task or tool are easy to do/use.

 

If you have a ball with a 12" diameter and two baskets, one with a 14" diameter opening and one a 16"  diameter opening, then throwing the ball in the one with the larger opening is easier than throwing it in the one with the small opening. That does not mean that throwing the ball through an opening is easy. You still have to master the skill to throw it properly. Hence, CF & APCD. Neither program will be easy to use, but once you learn it, certain tasks will likely be much easier with the one tool than the other.

 

 

If seam blending is more difficult to do in Corse Forge than in APCD, then I apologize for the misinformed opinion.

[Acrilix]

@Bluenoser - I referred to the difficulty of creating the pot bunker, not the seam blend, as you can see from my reply (I didn't realise you were referring just to seam blends). Of course seam blending will be easier if it is automatic. It's not actually hard in APCD, just time consuming. All the seams I've seen so far though are very uniform. In APCD you can vary the thickness of dirt lips, for instance, whenever you like.

Mike Jones' bunker picture looks excellent, but it's still not as excellent as his APCD bunkers, where he had a lot of manual control.