18 replies to this topic

[Mike Jones]

This is a rebuild from an imported heightmap of one of my Links 2003 courses - 'ShadowLands' 

 

As you might have seen in other forum topics, CourseForge is currently in Beta testing with members from this community so hopefully it won't be too long before you have something to play around with.

 

Hope you like the preview pics.

 

 

You can find the high res pics here along with a lot more: http://s942.photobuc...f?sort=3&page=1

 

[nightowl]

There's nothing else like a Mike Jones course. Long live the king!

[Jimbobh]

Looking forward to using these tools, Thanks for the tease.

[Mick-S]

Stunning Mike, what more can I say.

[BladeUK]

Great work as always, Mike.

Dave.

[Mike Jones]

Might be of interest to tell the process of getting the course into CourseForge from it's Links roots. The terrain importer is used to turn the APCD export into an elevation heightmap, then I captured some top view screenshots to piece together into one big one and then overlay that on top of the heightmap to form the base of the course. 

I then traced around the course shapes using the top view as a guide to create all the fairways, greens, bunkers, semi-rough etc. You can see in this pic where I've started to paint in some textures onto the terrain to the bottom and to the right side of the picture.

[IanD]

Excellent stuff Mike.... CF Teaser..

 

Did you have to adjust the overlay image you initially took when importing it into Unity, size-wise?

Did you start with the exact terrain size from the heightmap, or did you extend it further..?

[Mike Jones]

I started with the actual terrain size which was about 1600m square. You can crop your image from the bottom left corner and it matches the heightmap perfectly. I took my top view screengrabs in APCD which by default orientates itself in the correct way to match with the export - handy

[KenR]

Beautiful Mike, thanks for sharing. Would I be correct in assuming that all of the textures, objects, trees and vegetation in your rebuild are stock objects that will be included in CF when it becomes available?

[Kablammo11]

hmm…?

 

[Mike Jones]

Textures and objects are our own, the vegetation is a mixture of licensed third party stuff and our own. Depending on what kind of licensing deal we can strike with some of the third part vendors we may be able to include some of their libraries with CourseForge but certainly we will have stock vegetation assets too.

[KenR]

OK, thanks for the reply. So some of the vegetation we're seeing in your rebuild shots will probably not be available in CF at release; we're just going to have to wait to see what will be included.

 

Thanks Mike; I hope you're successful in completing some good agreements, the more and varied the vegetation is that comes with CF at release the better the courses will be when they start rolling out.

[IanD]

Mike.. I'd love to know a rough count of the various assets used within your course... individual I mean, not a total asset count.

 

Planting, I'm beginning to feel, is going to become a huge identity regarding courses. As we're pretty much only seeing basic trees, for example in Unity (free), the need for various vegetation will only increase. Whilst there may be various cost options regarding the Asset Store, I'm wondering if there is a way to begin identifying what's used, where from, costs, and any other options.

 

So, based on your Shadowlands project, how many variations of trees are used...? Just as a starter...

[AndyJumbo]

aaaah oh yeah, Stunning Mike, i like the texture you show to us in here, it's a good long way to follow!

[IanD]

Ok, another Q Mike... hoping you're able to help regarding some texture info here..

 

Here's an image of a texture I created within Unity...

 

The texture is tiled at 1024 x 1024, tiling set at 5.

I also created a Terrain Bump and set bumpiness at 0.015 (sharp). Now, whilst I've tried to ensure there is no shine on my terrain bump, anything higher than 0.3 does begin to have a reflectiveness, almost a circular shadow around myself as I move across the texture. However, as shown above, it isn't visible at this setting. It would be hard to illustrate as it's only seen during movement.

 

My question, is are you using a terrain bump in your current textures, what settings are you using, and how visually, does it transfer into the PG game - is it worth pursuing basicallly ?

[Mike Jones]

The answer is - I don't use a unity terrain bump because grass doesn't look good when it's bump mapped IMO. I like your texture a lot but the bump doesn't add any realism to it. Sand on the other hand would definitely benefit but they are part of our CourseForge meshes and open to different methods than the stock unity terrain.

[IanD]

Thanks for the reply matey..

 

I've not given up on bumping grass... although I have yet to really nail anything I like more than seeing it once. It kind of looks fine for the achievement, but 24hrs later it hasn't sat well with me and I move on. I need to experiment more with bump maps and the grinding of 0.01's...

[shimonko]

I notice you have blurry bands on your screenshot too, Ian - change the texture filtering to "trilinear" if you wish to eliminate.

[IanD]

Thanks... not 100%, but believe most of mine are set to Trilinear. Maybe this shot wasn't... it's hard to keep track of the details you play with when tinkering !