14 replies to this topic

[bortimus]

No doubt we will all be blown away by Dr. Rob Miller's work on The Glen.  His bunker work looks incredible!

 

Seeing his posts made me curious as to what can be done in the Layers Library rather than building meshes in an outside program.  Perhaps someone else has delved into this and I have overlooked it.      

Here are some poor man's attempts to create non-uniform bunker lips using only textures and blends in the LL.

 

The simple start:  A few small areas of sand thrown out towards the green from splash shots.  I tried to clean up the back of the bunker and focus the uneven parts on the greenside face as much as possible.  The placement of the sandy bits on the outer texture fall randomly depending on the tiling.  Even though you can't control the UV mapping of the layers, by moving the control points on the spline you can either accent the blend to the uneven parts of the outer layer texture (green facing side) or hide them (back of bunker).  One big drawback of this method is the shape of bunkers can be influenced by where the best potential blends happen to fall.  

 

One texture around this bunker.     

 

Using a Pot layer and a Fringe layer for more of an unkempt/blowout look:  Two different textures used here.  

 

 

These were just my initial experiments using the default layers library and changing a few textures in GIMP.  More experimenting needs to be done for sure. I think my inner texture here needs higher resolution and it's too busy so it's hard to hide the transitions.  There's a lot of fiddling with the control points needed to get the blends to look how you want/where you want them, and ultimately you are at the mercy of the texture tiling.     

 

The terrain shaping here is just an afterthought as well.  Some good terrain shaping along with custom texturing/color matching/normals and finding the perfect tiling numbers could really create some interesting bunker styles.  The tough part is getting the right combination of things to hide the ring around the bunkers and make it flow into the surrounding areas seamlessly.  

[worrybirdie]

Very nice work Borty! Nice to see someone else is obsessed as much as I am with this thing! (Probably more so, though I'm putting in at least 3 hours a day)

[DPRoberts]

Having experienced mesh painting, I think your idea may find a happy middle ground. The mesh painting is pretty intensive but gets incredible results. The resolution of the mesh painter is the advantage.

However, some well done textures could pass a close second and save a ton of time over mesh painting.

You can do what you've done and then adjust verts in Unity. My whole issue with mesh painting was out to Blender and back to Unity. This idea keeps everything in Unity.

The other advantage of the painter is access to 4-8 paintable textures versus the two here.

Maybe a picture of your splines can help us see what work you've done. I believe Mika has done something similar.

[bortimus]

I must have overlooked Mika's bunkers.  I'll look around his courses and check them out.

 

Yes I think mesh painting is the superior method.  I just wonder if it will ever be included within CF in the future.  Or will CF allow us to use scripts/other assets to alter the CF meshes?     

 

BTW these bunkers are just one spline with the pot and fringe doing the texturing work.  Moving spline points helps to blend in or blend out certain parts of the textures.   The simple greenside bunker used just a fringe layer, no pot.  

 

The messy bunker uses this:  

 

Pot layer.  Probably need to make this 4096 res.   

 

Fringe layer.  For bits of sand thrown out of the bunker

 

This was a different texture library I was trying.  I like a really messy pot texture with a variety of grasses, dirt, sand etc.. to give the illusion of more random bunker edging.  The texture needs to be higher res but this little section looks pretty cool to me:    

 

The drier grass transition on the outer edge is too much of a tell though.  Need to figure out how to hide that better.    

[Drrobmiller]

A word about mesh painting…it can be very very  unstable.  

 

I was cruising for a while but when I made it to my last hole which has 60 bunkers, I was getting game crashes at 30 percent.

 

I mean, A LOT of crashes… enough to quit crashes.  I could have completed the bunker portion of my course 3 weeks ago, but it has been a slow process trying to figure out the problem.

 

What could have been completed in 6 hours has now taken me 3-4 weeks of on and off saves, crashes, backups etc.  I have to complete only one bunker at a time, save and test, then backup because it is just too hard to find the problem when I get the crashes.

 

Because I have so many bunkers and the file is just over 400 megs, I found out that it’s the amount of materials assigned to the course.  Sometimes the crash would be because of the resolution, or even the name on the materials.

 Sometimes it’s the texture. It’s been a brutal 4 weeks but I will not let this setback deter my efforts because I’m so close to the finish.

 

There are 500 plus bunkers on this course. They all play like sand in the game.  Another tedious process is splitting the mesh into 2 parts to assign the sand and rough properties.

 

 

So that’s the story.  I have maybe 3 bunkers or clusters of bunkers to complete and then a some touch up planting,  pin check and ready to go.

 

On a side note there have been some gameplay improvements by adjusting the LOD on 2 3d grass objects.

 

So the lowest frame rate on 2 holes is now 25 FPS instead of 18-19…and most holes are at 30-40.  This is at ultra DEFAULT settings.

 

 

Rob

[DPRoberts]

Thanks for the update Rob. I figured that would be an issue. I think you could have grouped bunkers onto the same UV layout and reduced things but I wouldn't suggest it now. Hopefully, you can grind it out.

 

Bortimus, I wanted to show you an image of Mika's bunkers on Great River White. The images are of the first bunker you come to on the left of hole 1. It's not what you are doing but I think there is something to be learned or combined between what you are trying and what he has done. I cannot explain his images below. Maybe he can assist?

 

I almost feel like this bunker is terrain painted but if so, it seems his brush is much higher resolution than mine ever is on the terrain. I would get squarish edges where he maintains a very detailed roundness. I would also get more smearing or softening of the texture.

 

 

[bortimus]

I went to that bunker and I can't find any evidence of a mesh or a mesh cut-out.  It looks to be terrain painted and it plays as rough.  

The texturing does look very good.  

[DPRoberts]

Ok. Makes sense. Well, both your works give me ideas and can improve the look of the terrain paint and the bunkers.

I think your style just needs a bit of Photoshop fiddling and it'll be just right.

[Drrobmiller]

DP,...there are many meshes that contain 2-3 bunkers with same UV.

but the hard part is altering the bunkeredges to get them irregular in blender, importing back in, getting them back in just right with terrain and then painting each bunker within the same shared mesh

 

So yeah,  its really just one mesh...but  i have to save 24 minutes and test in game before moving on to make sure what i did is not crashing the game.  I didnt have this problem for the first 475 bunkers...weird

 

It took me a week to narrow down the problem, and its hit or miss by adding a bunker i get a crash.  Its like a 1 in 4 shot to work.  thank god i only have 3 meshes left. if this happened after 9 holes the project would have been aborted, or at least the bunkers all deleted

[bortimus]

Dr. Rob that is an insane amount of work you've put into those bunkers.  How would you compare that to the process in APCD?      

 

DP, I'd also be curious to hear how Mika gets his terrain texture painting results.

 

I don't have a great eye for color matching or texturing in general.  I'm sure someone else could really make the Layers Library method look much better than I could.         

[Drrobmiller]

As for terrain painted bunkers,  yeah they look fine but when you land in it is plays as rough.  In the game it won’t say if your lie is “sand” after the shot and the ball lands.

Plus, of course, near the green it won’t play as a sand splash shot.

 

Resolution is not great either, especially up close or in the bunker.

So yeah, mesh painting is superior, but very time consuming.

 

I would do it again, but not on a whistling straights type course.  Something with about 5 bunkers per hole

[Drrobmiller]

Bort…no comparison.

 

APCD….easy….,..once you learned it…each bunker a few minutes, even with seam blending.  I would move around the verts to get an irregular look, and do 5 blends per bunker.

 

CF…holy crap…first you have to draw the bunkers,..test to see if it looks good.  Then go back in, export out to  blender to alter edges, import back in,..get it matched up….

Then paint, get it right,…then split up to add properties…Dude, it could take 45 minutes.  My fastest was about 20 minutes depending on the detail.

But CF is superior to APCD with the painting....no seam blends...CF wins hands down

 

So yeah,…30-40 bunkers per hole?  That’s why I did the par 3s first.

 

A lot of insanity,…been working on this since November….and it took 3 months prior to start of course to figure things out including $ spent at unity asset store on plugins that failed

 

One plugin cost me  50 bucks…I was hoping to be able to move the terrain verts individually but it failed,…wouldn’t work.

There were also some terrain/blending  blending plugins…close but not enough resolution

The RTF plugin is great, but just couldnt get it to work either

 

LOL  crazy…looks good though

[pingzing]

Nice work Bortimus, thanks for being intuitive and creative

 

Well done buddy

[mikahenrik]

Dr. Rob that is an insane amount of work you've put into those bunkers.  How would you compare that to the process in APCD?      

 

DP, I'd also be curious to hear how Mika gets his terrain texture painting results.

 

I don't have a great eye for color matching or texturing in general.  I'm sure someone else could really make the Layers Library method look much better than I could.         

 

I did create quite a few courses in Unity before I had access to CF so lots of time went into terrain painting. I try to match the textures with the ground contours and this can be very time consuming when creating sandy dunes or large sandy "waste" areas. Another thing I've learned very useful is not to focus too much in details instead look at a larger part of the landscape. Zooming out and keep coming back and tweaking. Sorry guys I'm really poor at explaining but lots of practice helps.

 

Anyway I did create this one so not sure you should listen to me That's my first course and needs some tweaking with the surrounds I guess I'm planning to finish that one day.

[DPRoberts]

Wow, Mika that looks, um, er... Good to see you've improved!