32 replies to this topic

[TheOtherRick]

So, here I am. Free version of Unity 4.6 installed on Ye Olde Computing Machine (heretofore referred to as The Dinosaur). I am starting this thread so that I and others can learn the fine art of golf course design. What better way to learn than from a 'hands-on" approach with the guidance of the many skilled course builders that frequent this forum. I am sure that this thread will be of use to any and all that pursue this hobby. But enough of all that...let's get started!

 

I am going to try and closely replicate a real golf course located very near to where I live. It is called Timberline Golf Club. It is a semi-private course open to the public near Calera, AL. Here is a link to it's website.

http://timberlinegc.com/

 

And here is a link that will give you a virtual course tour.

http://timberlinegc.com/golf/course-tour/

 

I will be calling the course Tymberlyne, much as "Florida Glades" was used by PP. I have already begun working on my course map texture for the base texture in Unity. I am using a very old, but efficient and sufficient, version of Photoshop to create it. I will go more in depth about that in my next post.

 

I want to encourage all manner of advice, critique, and any other helpful comments from the folks that read along and share the ride that I am about to start. Updates will be as often as real life permits, and I will tell you ahead of time, they won't be at breakneck speed. See ya soon...

[jimbob59]

Hi TORick

 

Great idea and Im sure a lot of people will be grateful.  

However  Ive just downloaded  the free Unity 5 as Im sure others will.  Just making you aware of the situation,  I have no idea what PP will be doing in this respect to CF regarding Unity 5

 Hopefully  Ill still be able to follow your tutorials

 

Jim

[Dazmaniac]

Hi TORick

 

Great idea and Im sure a lot of people will be grateful.  

However  Ive just downloaded  the free Unity 5 as Im sure others will.  Just making you aware of the situation,  I have no idea what PP will be doing in this respect to CF regarding Unity 5

 Hopefully  Ill still be able to follow your tutorials

 

Jim

 

Currently looking Unity 5 as CF doesn't work with it at present so limited to Unity 4.6

 

Dev's will be looking at it, but Unity 5 not top of the list at the moment.

 

[jimbob59]

Thanks Daz

Ive just read the other thread and understand why TO Rick  is using Unity 4,6.   So Ill download that and hope I can keep up with  any instructions.

[Dazmaniac]

General searches on YouTube for Unity tutorials might help too. Some good stuff on there, if not directly golf course related, but shows you how to use the tools and get the desired effects.

 

[TheOtherRick]

@ jimbob59 - You could probably follow along just fine using Unity 5. As Daz noted and you noticed later in another post, Unity 4.6 is the latest release that is compatible with CF. Hence my decision not to go with U5. If CF becomes compatible with U5 down the road, I can always upgrade. I do not have CF currently, but I'm hoping to "earn" one (he said with a grin).

 

Now for a moment of boring thread starting issues (actually only one). I could not find a post with "forum rules" listed. So what I need to know is what the size limit is for inserted images embedded in thread posts. My screen resolution is 1680 x 1050, so my screen shots are the same size. Most forums will not allow images that large. What size am I limited to? What size is recommended for embedded images if there is no limit? I am thinking no bigger than, say, 1024 x 768? The alternative is to host the full size images off site and have links to them. I can certainly do this, but I know that when I read a post, I like having the pics right there.

 

Any help here would be appreciated (especially from an Admin).

 

Thanks.

[Dazmaniac]

TOR,

 

I use a free third party image hosting site called IMGUR - http://imgur.com/

 

You upload your images to their site and you can specify the sizes you want the pics to be viewed at. They also give you the URL for the images so that you can embed the pic straight in to your forum post using the icon just below left of the smiley on the toolbar above the text area when you post.

 

I've often added images that are 1920x1080. Often the forum will limit the size of the embedded image and to see the full version, folks just click on it to expand it.

 

[TheOtherRick]

@ Dazmaniac (twice) - You must have posted as I was writing my last one. First, thanks for the tutorial search recommendation. I have already begun that process. Lots of good stuff out there. Second, I do already have an Imgur account. That is what I was going to use if image sizes were going to be an issue, which I suspect they are. In thread posts, I will probably insert a smaller version (800 x 600) and have a link to the full size pic on Imgur. Keeps the bandwidth usage down that way.

[Kablammo11]

That's one area where size truly doesn't matter. I use imgur as well and work on a 2560 x 1440 screen, so many of my screen caps exceed the 1920 x 1080 standard screen size and there never was any problem with that. Yes, forum posts show a smaller version by default, but clicking on it brings up the original.

So to heck with caution and just go for it!

[clubcaptain]

Looked on the unity site and could not see a reference to V4.6. Is there a particular place to get it please.

[TheOtherRick]

Looked on the unity site and could not see a reference to V4.6. Is there a particular place to get it please.

 

When you get to the Unity 5 Main Page, scroll all the way down. You will see several columns and one will have the header "Download". Right below the header is a link called "Unity". Click that. On the new page, scroll down again until you see "Resources". Right under that is a link that says "Older Versions of Unity".

[TheOtherRick]

Ok, time for the first post. It's all about planning. I can tell that I have learned one thing while working in the construction industry for over 30 years. All you will build without a plan is a piece of shit. It's that simple. So planning is probably the most important aspect in a large scale project. This is why I chose to closely replicate a golf course that already exists. The plans have already been made. I am reproducing instead of designing. Makes life easier.

 

That being said, I still need a set of plans to work from. So, for anyone trying to replicate a real course, Google Earth and Google Maps set to "Earth" view are your best friends. I fired up Google Earth and zoomed into the golf course.

 

 

As you can see, I used the measure tool and discovered my first piece of good news. At it's widest point, the course is less than 2,000 meters wide. This means that it will fit nicely in the 2K meter by 2K meter box I will use in Unity. So, how do I make my map? I located the course in Google Maps, set to earth view, and I zoom in until the scale bar is down to 200 ft (or approx. 60 meters), and take a screenshot of that section of the course. It looks like this...

 

 

I save this to my working folder, move the view and repeat until I have taken "snapshots" of the entire course. Then I open Photoshop (I am using a very old version, Photoshop 6) and open the files. I also open a very large canvas. In my screenshots, I crop off the useless bits, then drag them to the large empty canvas. Each time I drag one in, I position it in sync with the previous one, like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Soon I have them all in place and I use the eraser tool to trim off even more useless bits. Lastly, I use the crop tool set to 2048 x 2048 pixels to give me a perfectly square picture that contains the entire course. When completed, I have something that looks like this...

 

 

This square JPEG file will ultimately become my base texture in Unity, but there is more work to be done first. All that white area needs to go away. I want the course features to be distinct on the base texture. Suffice it to say that all of this work will look nothing like it does by the time we import the texture into Unity. We'll talk about all of this in the next post.

[Kablammo11]

A man with a plan! I'm favourably impressed. And thank you for taking the time to post here.

 

Since I dabble exclusively with fictional courses, I can't point you in the best direction to procure and import geodata for your terrain so that you get the proper elevations for your height map - But there are many others around who can. Ask here if you need assistance from them.

The white is indeed a bit disturbing. I may be exactly a day late with this suggestion, but why not use the same procedure you did for the golf course? Don't crop off the useless bits and make a full 2K by 2K collage of Google Map pictures? Your base map then would cover the entire terrain and the useless bits would still tell you if there is a forest or a meadow in the distance, or, ewww, one of those hideous cul-de-sac housing suburbian middle class clusters.

Think of the base map as of an empty "painting by numbers" canvas, containing numbered fields for colorisation. Even the useless bits contain one or the other information for you to cover up with textures at a later stage. If you want to highlight the golf course proper you can still outline in in Photoshop.

 

kutgw

[TheOtherRick]

@ Kablammo11 - I thank you for your input. Exactly what I want in this thread...LOTS of input from the seasoned veterans.

 

Importable geodata will indeed be useful when the time comes (and that will be soon). While playing around with Unity, I found that there are some features not available in the program which were available in APCD. Specifically a terrain height data readout. In APCD, I could get the elevation information for any specific vert. This info does not appear to be available in Unity, or at least I have not found out how to obtain it yet. Perhaps there is an importable tool that does this. Barring that, geodata would be ideal. If it is unavailable for this golf course, I will need to figure out a work around. But we are setting the cart before the horse at this point in development.

 

As for the white, it is indeed going away. I will address that in the next installment. Your idea of using the same process for the entire 2K by 2K square is possible, however not practical. As you said, it will be painted over anyway, so why spend the time? In this case, I only need the collage where I need the course detail it gives me.

 

I like your "paint by numbers" analogy. The base texture is indeed only a guide. Highlighting the golf course proper is (spoiler alert) the subject of the next installment.

[Jimbobh]

You can do the same thing with the images in Google Sketchup, and also get the terrain at the same time.

This course I have been working on has 254 images stitched together.

 The terrain generated but there are several meshes, then Draped to make a single square mesh in Rhino.

 The result after everything is loaded in Unity

You can also find a short tutorial in the "Google Sketchup" thread I posted a while ago. Since it has been some time since the video, some things have changed, but gives you an idea. This was the simplest way I have found so far to get a fairly decent terrain to work with for real life courses. Terrain importer might be a better solution in the future, but it is my understanding it won't be FREE. It looks like they will have a trial version but will only give you a 128 height map resolution. Just my 2 cents worth, Jim

 

[TheOtherRick]

@ Jimbobh - Could you possibly post a link to that thread here? You have hit on something great here, especially the terrain. This will help a great deal. I have to say that I am shocked at the number of images stitched together in your collage. 254? YIKES! Mine used...um...8.

[shimonko]

While playing around with Unity, I found that there are some features not available in the program which were available in APCD. Specifically a terrain height data readout. In APCD, I could get the elevation information for any specific vert. This info does not appear to be available in Unity, or at least I have not found out how to obtain it yet. Perhaps there is an importable tool that does this. 

 

Selecting the paint height tool and shift-clicking on the terrain will tell you the elevation for any specific point.

 

 

You can also create an object (eg a sphere), Ctrl-Shift drag it across the terrain (drag the cube, not the arrows) and it will show you the terrain height as your drag.

[clubcaptain]

When you get to the Unity 5 Main Page, scroll all the way down. You will see several columns and one will have the header "Download". Right below the header is a link called "Unity". Click that. On the new page, scroll down again until you see "Resources". Right under that is a link that says "Older Versions of Unity".

Thanks.

[TheOtherRick]

I have hit a roadblock in my attempt to build Tymberlyne. I wanted to use Jimbobh's method of importing the terrain for the golf course. Unfortunately, due to reasons that are too verbose to explain here, I cannot install Google Sketchup on my computer. This leaves me two alternatives...

1. Get someone else to make a terrain for me.
2. Build my terrain the old fashioned way...from scratch.

So, I am curious as to whether someone (Jimbobh?) might be willing to make a terrain for me and e-mail me the file, preferably using the drape method in Rhino, as that gives me a clean grey terrain to place my base texture on. A 2K meter by 2K meter square frame will completely encapsulate the golf course, so no need for making any type of collage.

 

Barring that help, this project just became very labor intense...lol.

[TheOtherRick]

So here's an update on further progress. When I left off, I had the beginnings of a course map to use as my base texture in Unity. There was a ton of white area that needed to go away. The plan is to turn the information I already have into a "paint-by-numbers" guide (using K11's analogy). So I opened up my antiquated version of Photoshop and started coloring in the different course features.

 

 

As you can see, I used a medium shade of green for the fairways, a lighter shade for the greens, and off white for the bunkers. I did this for the whole course, adding the rough, cart paths, roads, water, clubhouse area, and lastly the heavy rough / forest areas. This last area comprises a vast majority of the terrain area. Each item has it's own color.

 

 

There is a TON of "dead area" that a player would likely never see (shaded in pink below).

 

 

This brings me to my next question. What do I do with this area? Do I just populate it with billboard trees? I don't want the file size to become burdensome. So suggestions are welcome and requested.

 

Thanks in advance and I'll have another installment later this week.