11 replies to this topic

[Brucey Mc]

While killing time I have been looking at a few courses and their terrains.  One thing that struck me was that not all courses are square, or more accurately fit reasonably into a square.  For instance, a lot of links courses such as St Andrews Old course or Troon are an Out and In Layout pretty much going out in one direction and back in the other.  This may lead to a layout that is more like a long rectangle than a square.  For instance if the course is 4000m by 2000m if we are creating a single terrain we would need to create a terrain of 4000m by 4000m which will be rather empty.  Would it be better to create 2 off 2000m by 2000m terrains and lay them next to each other in our scene?

Another example would be a course that has a large terrain difference from top to bottom.  If a course has a terrain height change of 200m for whatever reason you are losing height resolution with this so small terrain sculpting will be an issue.  In this instance would it be an idea to split the terrain into large height terrains with smaller terrains that we can sculpt our holes from lying on top of the more general terrain?

I am not saying I would do this but is there a reason why you can't or wouldn't?  Does Course Forge have an issue going on top of multiple or does it not care?  I guess there are other things to consider with  multiple terrains.  

Just throwing this out there.......

[Kablammo11]

Brucey, I completely agree that a basic square terrain shape is not very satisfying. And your suggestions to add a little more geometric zest are pertinent and justified. Unfortunately, and may somebody a bit more competent correct me if I'm wrong, you can only apply the blessings of the CourseForge to a single terrain. Only one. Just the one...  

[Brucey Mc]

Thanks K11 I had a feeling that might be the case 

[Kablammo11]

The Unity terrain engine is free, bless it, and it has limitations. Also, I still may be wrong (though I'm pretty sure that the CF meshes - 3D objects in their own right - need to be anchored to a single terrain, or else the Forge wouldn't know what is what). Still, this need not always be like that.

 

Could well be that 10 years or so from now the chaps at PP will find time to create something better...

 

• Something that lets the designer pick the exact shape and the outline of his terrain
• Something that lets us increase or lower terrain resolution depending on where we need it
• Something that comes with included erosion brushes (like Bryce managed to do it)
• Something that lets us attach terrain phyiscs and 3d grass to individual terrain textures
• Something that is capable of triplanar texturing
• Something that transcends the old, old, old height map elevation method. 
• Something that lets you build vertical cliffs and caves

In short, something that feels like the 21st century

 

Unitl then, this is it and that is that.  

[Brucey Mc]

Was just a wishful thought, as I said just killing time.  Back under my rock!

[Mike Jones]

The Unity terrain engine is free, bless it, and it has limitations. Also, I still may be wrong (though I'm pretty sure that the CF meshes - 3D objects in their own right - need to be anchored to a single terrain, or else the Forge wouldn't know what is what). Still, this need not always be like that.

 

Could well be that 10 years or so from now the chaps at PP will find time to create something better...

 

• Something that lets the designer pick the exact shape and the outline of his terrain
• Something that lets us increase or lower terrain resolution depending on where we need it
• Something that comes with included erosion brushes (like Bryce managed to do it)
• Something that lets us attach terrain phyiscs and 3d grass to individual terrain textures
• Something that is capable of triplanar texturing
• Something that transcends the old, old, old height map elevation method. 
• Something that lets you build vertical cliffs and caves

In short, something that feels like the 21st century

 

Unitl then, this is it and that is that.  

Luckily CourseForge can do most of that, in the future we will expand the tools so you can make the entire terrain with CF rather than using the Unity terrain but that's for CF v2.0 I think. For the time being we're concentrating on getting what we have as bug free as possible and then releasing it so more people can actually use it!

[LasseThid]

Brucey, there is a way to create a rectangular course with a single terrain, but the way I achieved it resulted in a rectangular mesh.

What I did was to create the heightmap accoring to the course measurements, in my case roughly 2500x1800 pixels. I then changed the size of the image to 4096 x4096 pixels (which caused some streching), set my terrain to 2500 x 1800 and imported the heightmap. Mesh looked like crap, but atleast I had a rectangular plot.   

[Brucey Mc]

Hi, yeah I have managed to get the terrain created too but was just trying to find better ways of doing stuff. I have had mixed results if I'm being honest.

[shimonko]

Yeah I recall when mucking around with rectangular terrains all the brushes would get likewise elongated and a few other annoyances that made me give up going down that route.

 

Mike once indicated having holes on multiple terrains wasn't supported. Even stitching two identically sized terrains with the same heightmap resolution would have issues painting or sculpting across the seam with Unity's terrain tools. Non indentically matched terrains, forget it. Far better to do a custom solution which solves all the other problems with terrains at the same time (many of which K11 mentioned).

[Brucey Mc]

Well having played about some more with the terrain I was not happy with and these are some of the results:

Ignore the colours, these are just for easy reference.  I'm not inventing pink greens and yellow tee boxes!  I know I have a few bits of mesh to clean up too.

Par three over water

A few deep bunkers

Difficult approach shot with water and bunkers to contend with

[Kablammo11]

Your methodology looks sound, Brucey. Must be so, since this reminds me of my own first steps...  

 

 

The huge disadvantage is that the uniform colors make you blind for subtle elevations changes in the terrain, like waves and ridges in the fairway

When I reached this very same stage you are at currently, I opened my layout jpg in Photoshop and added a little bit of noise to the entire picture (Filters > Textures > Grain), just very little of it, to help me visualize the contours of the ground a bit better. I also set the directional light a little lower, for it to produce longer shadows to reveal more uneven parts.

At this stage I also invented the cutout billboard of Tara King, btw, to quickly place into the picture in order to have a reference object that would show me a human-sized presence within the design. You needn't emulate this, but I aways crave to see what it would be like if somebody were standing on my fledgling course.

 

I'm waffling again, sorry. Just wanted to give you a thumbs up. Me likey!

[Brucey Mc]

Fab tip K11 about adding some grain to my texture, looks miles better now