56 replies to this topic

[Mike Jones]

Yes texture seam blending is easier than in APCD because in course is customisable and automatic - just to clear that up  Lot's of other things will be easier too but of course it's like anything, the more familiar you are with the tools the easier things will become. Having used APCD, the Sierra PGA golf course designer, The GBC course designer and the CustomPlay 1 and 2 designer I would say this is the easiest and quickest to get good results out of. 

More bunkers:

 

 

[garynorman]

Wow, they look great!!   

[highfade]

Mike, I don't want to be critical... that's why I'm not going to be, that just looks spectacular!!!    

[Davefevs]

N.I.C.E.!

[Keith]

The blends between 'layers' are definable in advanced modes so if you want to make a seam blend over a yard or an inch you can do.

All our layers come with defaults which can be altered to suit your needs. Our bunker lips are triplanar mapped automatically and once again the textures, depths, slopes etc can all be altered. All the course layers such as Rough, Fairway etc come with default textures - good ones! Each texture is made up of two individual textures blended together and they can be customised if you want to create and use your own textures or someone wants to share one of their texture 'libraries' with you.

If you have a great overhead image to start with of a real course you can even choose to use that as one of your texture blends and so your mow lines, worn and dry patches  etc will all be as they are on the real course.

At some point I'll be doing more advanced tutorials on all of that but for the time being I'll continue covering the basics of creating a course in Unity and CourseForge.

 

The main focus of CourseForge is to produce great looking courses in a fraction of the time it might take in other programs. This enables more time thinking about the course design and less about the the technicalities which plague other design programs.

Mike that point about mow lines and dry pathches translating into CF sounds freakin' AWESOME.  Sweet looking bunkers in the images above also.  You have always been an artist with this stuff.

[John Griffin]

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.  

 

I tend to agree with this comment, at least based on what we've seen so far.  When I think of amazing Mike Jones bunkers, I think of Rugged Dune.  Those obviously involved several (many?) textures and mappings to obtain that effect.  But if anyone is going to push Unity/CF to its limits in terms of aesthetic capability, Mike will!  And these images/videos are all pre-planting so far; the addition of surrounding grass objects that help blur the line between the sand and grass texture boundary will likely add another dimension to the final effect.

 

On another note, the RAM suggestions flying around are making me nervous (I've only got 2GB, but it's a 5-yr old machine).  May be looking at an upgrade all the way around (CPU, GPU, RAM)...

[TheLighterDark]

Thank you for the post, Mike. Looks great. 

[Mike Jones]

I tend to agree with this comment, at least based on what we've seen so far.  When I think of amazing Mike Jones bunkers, I think of Rugged Dune.  Those obviously involved several (many?) textures and mappings to obtain that effect.  But if anyone is going to push Unity/CF to its limits in terms of aesthetic capability, Mike will!  And these images/videos are all pre-planting so far; the addition of surrounding grass objects that help blur the line between the sand and grass texture boundary will likely add another dimension to the final effect.

 

On another note, the RAM suggestions flying around are making me nervous (I've only got 2GB, but it's a 5-yr old machine).  May be looking at an upgrade all the way around (CPU, GPU, RAM)...

Yep, for serious design fun, 2gb might not cut the mustard these days, please also bear in mind that not all bunkers are grassy fringed pits of terror like Rugged Dune 

In these example pics I was working on recreating the bunkers at my Links, ShadowLands course and these are probably better in the fact that they were a lot quicker to make, looks very similar and run in real time.

 

Where the comparisons with the Links engine have to stop is when you realise that Links used subdivisions in their meshes which mean the closer you got to the mesh, it split itself into thousands of tiny polygons automatically which is why you simply cannot run Links in real-time. Try turning on the 'hull' option in APCD to see what I mean.

Real time engines cannot do this as there are way too many polygons to push around the screen but they do have other advantages which more than compensate.

[Acrilix]

@ Mike Jones - Is it possible to vary the width within a bunker lip bend to make them look less uniform?

If not, could a small enough brush be used to paint on a dirt texture onto the sand, or sand onto the dirt to create the same effect?

[Stephen Sullivan]

Was wondering the same thing myself Lez.  Don't want uniforms lips all around a course.

[BladeUK]

It has definately been said , either here or on the videos that in advanced made you can vary the height of the lips rather than have a uniform lip.

 

Dave.

[BladeUK]

The blends between 'layers' are definable in advanced modes so if you want to make a seam blend over a yard or an inch you can do.

All our layers come with defaults which can be altered to suit your needs. Our bunker lips are triplanar mapped automatically and once again the textures, depths, slopes etc can all be altered.

Here.... If you can manipulate them manually I would say that does not mean "manipulate but keeping a uniformity all around the bunker". Otherwise there would be no need to manually adjust them you would just set the lip to automatically be larger.

 

Dave.

[John Griffin]

please also bear in mind that not all bunkers are grassy fringed pits of terror like Rugged Dune 

 

Well, in my opinion they should be!    (I'm a little partial to rustic rugged natural blowout bunkers)

 

Where the comparisons with the Links engine have to stop is when you realise that Links used subdivisions in their meshes which mean the closer you got to the mesh, it split itself into thousands of tiny polygons automatically which is why you simply cannot run Links in real-time. Try turning on the 'hull' option in APCD to see what I mean.

Real time engines cannot do this as there are way too many polygons to push around the screen but they do have other advantages which more than compensate.

 

Not sure I follow this ("turn on the hull in APCD to see what I mean") - obviously you can have the primary mesh visible (or not), but when zooming in to the mesh from a distance I don't see any difference between hull on or off.  Could be a subtle effect that my older video card can't render?

 

The faces in an APCD mesh appear to be similar size to faces in the Unity/CF mesh images you've posted - are you saying that the Links engine further breaks down mesh faces into smaller polygons for final rendering?

 

I think I'm in a similar camp with Lez & Stephen, I'm just wondering how much leeway there will be for non-uniformity.  I understand that you're focusing on the ability of Unity/CF to quickly produce perfectly acceptable looking bunker lips (which is a definite advantage over APCD), but do the Unity/CF tools have fine enough resolution to add some variation to better mimic natural differences in color/texture/depth that occur around bunker lips?

[Mike Jones]

Not sure I follow this ("turn on the hull in APCD to see what I mean") - obviously you can have the primary mesh visible (or not), but when zooming in to the mesh from a distance I don't see any difference between hull on or off.  Could be a subtle effect that my older video card can't render?

 

 

Actually yes if you change the surface in APCD from shaded to wire you can see the subdivisions I'm talking about. 

 

As far as non uniformity around the bunker lip, it's probably something we have talked about doing programmatically but it's not in there yet. As far as some of texture blending I'm using in the examples above, they use a completely and much easier method to do much of this.

 

For the reasons mentioned above with the subdivisions, in this area we are comparing apples to oranges in the way real time engines work compared to static ones. We have created CoureForge not just for the elite course builders who love diving into the technicalities (although there is nothing wrong with that!), but for everyone who has an interest in creating courses for their own pleasure and other's people's enjoyment.

[John Griffin]

Actually yes if you change the surface in APCD from shaded to wire you can see the subdivisions I'm talking about. 

 

As far as non uniformity around the bunker lip, it's probably something we have talked about doing programmatically but it's not in there yet. As far as some of texture blending I'm using in the examples above, they use a completely and much easier method to do much of this.

 

For the reasons mentioned above with the subdivisions, in this area we are comparing apples to oranges in the way real time engines work compared to static ones. We have created CoureForge not just for the elite course builders who love diving into the technicalities (although there is nothing wrong with that!), but for everyone who has an interest in creating courses for their own pleasure and other's people's enjoyment.

 

Thanks Mike - now I see what you mean in APCD by turning the surface from shaded to wire, never really messed with that before.

 

I totally understand the current approach & focus on simplifying the design process for everyone, was just curious to know how far Unity/CF limits can be pushed - and like I said, you're the best person I know to figure out how to get the most out of it!  I realize I'm probably trying to run before even learning how to crawl...

 

Appreciate the insight.

[Mike Jones]

No problem John, the great thing is that as we're constantly developing CourseForge, those limits will constantly be shifting and that has to be a good thing 

[Dazmaniac]

No problem John, the great thing is that as we're constantly developing CourseForge, those limits will constantly be shifting and that has to be a good thing 

 

How's the bug fixing coming along?