146 replies to this topic

[AndyJumbo]

Good to hear another user join in.. like Wonka's Golden Tickets being revealed... !

 

Q for either really, and love to see some work if you have the time to emulate..

 

- Bunkers

 

Wanted to know, since all we are seeing regarding the current TPC of Brian/Steve and those here.. are what can really be achieved..?

 

Bunkers, hazards as they are, can be quite deliberate in design regarding the style of course. So, with regards to some of the following images.. how flexible is the CF in recreating something similar ?

 

Currently, we're seeing alot of this type bunker..

 

However, how difficult is it to recreate these types..?

 

 

I'm sure there are more variations etc, but I'm curious to know if this is easily achieved, or whether it is simply "getting the right look" for the texture on the wall of the bunker?

 

Wow, i'm sure i would be in trouble if i would hit my ball into these bunkers, they looks good but dangerous !!!!!!

[Kablammo11]

May I ask, what enhancements/updates you guys would like to see in the next build...?

From either perhaps cosmetic to functionality..

 

Sorry, IanD. Does "you guys" perhaps refer to us Beta testers? If so, please confirm. There's not much I can say about the subject, but 1 or 2 little things spring to mind...

[IanD]

Confirmed.

[highfade]

Ian

 

IMO CF is pretty complete as is. Obviously were're using a "light" version without all the promised vegetation packs, bulkheads etc. What I hope will be in the next build or public release is the pot bunker option.

 

For me, Unity is where most of my time goes into. I'm trying a lot of things, downloading stuff and testing it; my file system is a mesh, I mean mess. Yesterday I lost my terrain and found it hidden in a Spline folder  

 

I'll think about this some more.    

Adriaan

[Kablammo11]

Okay. Always keeping in mind that I don't know how many ressources PP have at their disposal and that there are technical restraints due to the fact that CF is piggybacked by Unity, what I would like to see is...

 

- A few quality of life issues could be improved, like buttons not staying active and resetting to default. The biggest of these is that sometimes the Forge does not "know" for sure if I want to draw a mesh or just edit its control points, so that when I want to move a control point it starts drawing a new shape instead.

These little things will get ironed out over time without me forcing the issue. For the time being it's easier and quicker for me to adapt to the software than to adapt the software to me. Most of the tiny thing that irked me a bit at the start I now take in my stride as I got used to working with the Forge.

 

Things I would very much like to see in future builds:

- "Paintability of the Meshes" - we discussed this a bit further up this thread. MJ says it's very difficult to make this possible. He did not say it was impossible, though. Very long term, at best.

- A choice of shapes - rectangles, circles, to be added straight onto the terrain. As of now we need to draw them by hand or click on the points.

-  The ability to create a new mesh enclosing an existing one. Right now, we have to create a border of semi-rough around a fairway from scratch - even if it is basically an enlarged fairway. It would save a lot of time if we could highlight the fairway, select a command that says "create a new mesh surrounding this one at a distance of XX meters", and then go and tweak the control points of that new mesh by hand.

- Pot bunkers, of course

-  A lot more textures and shaders for fairway, green, rough, bunker textures (I'm fine, I'm doing my own textures and shaders, but then I'm a bit particular in this respect.)

- The ability to customize more stuff like giving the tees special names, giving holes a name.

- Drop Zones, O.O.B, water hazards

- Once realeased to the public it needs, as highfade just pointed out, a double crapload of extra stuff like trees, bushes, rocks, grasses etc.

 

There are a lot more things that I wish were different. But these are about Unity. CF strikes me as being stable and doing well what it is supposed to do. 

[IanD]

Thanks to you both for the replies.

 

I'm glad you highlighted the "quality of life issues" K11, as I sense I understand those little irks where default isn't always what you want. Hope the guys pick up on this and manage to intro some of these changes before the big push. It's often frustrating learning one way to then discover things have changed in later build, as you find your old habits die hard..

 

As for the other additions suggested, some good points. Even without the CF here I can see good logic in those requests.

 

Did I ever see a discussion of Grouping in another thread..?

The ability to group all the shapes specifically to one hole?

[Kablammo11]

Don't think you did, Ian. Earlier in this thread, when I revealed that meshes are not being assigned to particular holes, very quickly the very pertinent question came up what this would mean to playing stats like fairways hit or greens in regulation. It went unanswered by anybody who would know how to deal with this.

 

A little addition from me:

There is a very strong departementalization going on in this current setup: The Forge does things very well that the golfing structure of a golf course does. Unity does things that Unity does: Terraforming, topography, vegetation. And Photoshop does best what Photoshop does: Textures, graphics. Add to that the different softwares you might need for creating 3D models...

That means that CF will be one, very important, but still only one of different tools you will need to use to create a golf course. And it's sometimes quite brutal when you run into an area of design where one tool goes off duty and another one needs to be brought in. 

There are, in golf course design, some areas where Unity is in charge, but which are so essential to course design that I wish that the Forge, with time, would expand into them: Water, tree creation, vegetation, grass (volumetric, please), path tools for car paths, fence and/or wall tools. As per today, if we want to quickly add a bulkhead, we're on our own - and whatever we do, it ain't going to happen quickly. The Forge goes off duty on the bulkheads. 

So, certainly not in the next build or the next year, but further down the road I hope that the CourseForge will expand into Unity terrain and not just focus on ground shapes and physics, but on "anything golf".

[Mike Jones]

I think it should be stressed that many of the other areas that K11 is talking about regarding other external programs for textures 3d models etc are all optional. CF comes with some good defaults so unless you want to dig a little deeper there really is no need for all the other stuff.

 

The premise of CF was that it would be simple enough so that people could go in and create a good looking course pretty easily and quickly however, if they wanted to create something unique and exactly the way they envisioned it, much like K11 is doing using the full power of Unity, it would support this too. You can have you cake and eat it after all 

[nightowl]

K11, what about assets? Does the CF include enough to prevent all courses from looking the same? Would you anticipate having to purchase more from the Unity store?

[Kablammo11]

Depends on the assets. We just received a minimal version of CF to work with. We got, for example, 3 fairway textures and 1 fairway shader to choose from. 1 green textures and 1 green shader. 1 texture and shader for sand, rough, semi-rough, deep rough… It goes to reason that with such limited choice there is not much visual variation on offer. So I went and quickly made some of my own (Find the Show & Tell thread for examples).

Equally, Unity also comes with only a handful of it's own textures for the terrain. They have no interest in giving you all the tools for free, their business model is to make you want more and let their supporters sell it to you. Again, I went and created my own textures. You could download some from the Unity Asset Store - for free or for cash - to get more choice if you don't want to design your own textures.

Or, what I suggest, is that you can just wait a bit for two things that certainly will happen:

1. Future versions of CF will offer a much larger choice of textures, shaders, trees, rocks and object.

2. With time, the users of CF will start making contributions to each other, uploading their own textures somewhere here for others to download and use them. 

 

A third thing that also could happen is that you start creating your own assets. Pal, if I can do it, believe me, it's not that difficult. So, no need for you to start clasping your wallet. Time, the greatest healer of them all, will fly to your help at snail's pace. This is still the beginning. Right now, there are just the bare essentials to be had. The makers, and if not them, then the community, will see to it that a lot of variety will be made available.

 

@Mike: Yeah, but my cake tastes better.

[nightowl]

Thanks, K11, for the detailed reply.

[Stephen Sullivan]

Can't wait to start learning and producing courses     

[highfade]

3-wood please.

 

At the moment I spent 90% of my time with Unity and not CF. Mike made available some bulkheads to play around with. I can see that there was a lot of "out of the box" thinking involved by the team to get these things to work.

 

 

[IanD]

Nice... wondering if you'll add some steps into the side of the bulkhead, with perhaps a path to a bridge...? Only joking..

 

Like the texture on the bulkhead and think it works well.. I'm beginning to wonder about the Willow Tree more and more (K11's fault)... as the first image shows it seemingly out of place.. love the other planting though.

[Kablammo11]

Them willows are staying, ya hear?   Why? Sheer spite!

[Mick-S]

  Kablammo11,

  what is the problem with CF, or is there some other reason why they won`t release it ?

[Mike Jones]

It's in the first round of Beta testing Mick. Bugs and workflow issues that have been found are being fixed so make it easier for other people later. 

[Mick-S]

It's in the first round of Beta testing Mick. Bugs and workflow issues that have been found are being fixed so make it easier for other people later. 

o.k Mike cheers

[IanD]

Bulkheads... would love some further explanation regarding these.. only managed to a tee area like this so far..

 

 

 

Nowhere near as impressive as your bulkheads... so the thinking outside of the box... may I beg some hints ?

[Kablammo11]

Hint:

- Once in CF, place the inner shape you want bulked or the tee you want boxed

- Surround it with the bulkheads, dont worry if they stick out a lot

- Method 1: Calculate the CF mesh inside and then lift it up to the top bulkhead level

- Method 2: Raise the terrain to the top level of the bulkhead, calculate the CF mesh, lower the terrain below to the lower level, the CF mesh stays on the top

 

What you need to wrap your brain around: Once the CF mesh is calculated, you do not need the Unity terrain below to match it exactly. Think of a jar of preserves sealed with a celophane cover. The Unity terrain is like the preserves, the bulkhead like the glass jar around them, the CF mesh like the celophane cover on top. 

What you can do in Unity is to remove the preserves after covering the jar with the cover - by lowering the terrain away from the CF mesh on top. You get lovely, perpendicular bulkheads without having to struggle with the terrain tools to get a nice drop. 

 

Good looking images, though.