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Post by doctanick on Apr 23, 2019 18:28:24 GMT -5
Hello everyone! This is my first 'from scratch' course. it has been quite the learning experience but after many hours in the tool set I am ready to share Woodgreen with the community. I have just released version 11(v11). Thanks in advance for your feedback. Enjoy!
I found the screenshot editor to be very annoying to use as the camera controls were awful. I will try to take better screenshots later.
Approach to 1
4th Tee
9th Tee
Approach to 15
18th Green / Clubhouse
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MikeB
Amateur Golfer
Posts: 255
TGCT Name: Mike Branca
Tour: Elite
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Post by MikeB on Apr 23, 2019 21:52:57 GMT -5
I'd suggest not splitting the fairway or green splines with bunkers. The space between the sand and fairway is gone and looks inconsistent with the rest of the fairway. Generally you want to avoid bunkers running through multiple surfaces, and usually they should have rough or heavy rough along their edges.
More variation in planting behind the greens. It's mostly the same 2 plants and sparse.
Hole 10, lower the terrain on front of the tee so you can see the green. Would be a good looking tee shot. A lot of holes have the same blind tee shot issue.
The lighting and green color make the holes and slope lines difficult to see.
I thinks it's a decent first course that could be good with work.
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Post by doctanick on Apr 24, 2019 8:48:22 GMT -5
I'd suggest not splitting the fairway or green splines with bunkers. The space between the sand and fairway is gone and looks inconsistent with the rest of the fairway. Generally you want to avoid bunkers running through multiple surfaces, and usually they should have rough or heavy rough along their edges. More variation in planting behind the greens. It's mostly the same 2 plants and sparse. Hole 10, lower the terrain on front of the tee so you can see the green. Would be a good looking tee shot. A lot of holes have the same blind tee shot issue. The lighting and green color make the holes and slope lines difficult to see. I thinks it's a decent first course that could be good with work. Thanks for the feedback.
All the bunkers are splines. I experimented with layering regular bunker textures but I thought the ring of rough they generate is quite ugly, especially in fairway bunkers. I am curious to know what other course designers opinions are on this. Is the ring of rough around a bunker mandatory?
Planting was by far the most time consuming part. The meter is well over half full so I am not sure I can make it much thicker. I am also curious to know at what point it starts to run into fps issues. Hopefully just adding 1 or 2 more plant varieties will be enough.
I will look at all the tee shots again as well as different green textures so that the lines can be seen better.
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Post by jeachus on Apr 24, 2019 19:46:18 GMT -5
I can say from a planting standpoint that I often go heavy in obsessing over all views having bountiful planting. That being said, I’ve damn near filled the meter and not had FPS issues. Something I’ve been told by others in another thread on FPS is that large objects and a lot of objects in one “shot” or “screen” will cause chugging. But, if you distribute fairly evenly around the course, you can push limits on this. Do one hole, play test, and if it lags, do some deleting.
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Post by doctanick on Apr 26, 2019 0:14:53 GMT -5
Version 12a is now live. (Small issue with v12 that had to be fixed)
Thanks again for the feedback.
- resculpted every hole to address blind tee shots. elevated tee boxes etc. - changed green texture and time of day so that the holes and break lines are more visible.
I will look at adding more variety of plants in the next version.
Here are a few examples of the changes:
2nd tee shot
3rd hole
4th fairway
10th hole
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Post by grovey31 on Apr 27, 2019 6:07:35 GMT -5
I'd suggest not splitting the fairway or green splines with bunkers. The space between the sand and fairway is gone and looks inconsistent with the rest of the fairway. Generally you want to avoid bunkers running through multiple surfaces, and usually they should have rough or heavy rough along their edges. More variation in planting behind the greens. It's mostly the same 2 plants and sparse. Hole 10, lower the terrain on front of the tee so you can see the green. Would be a good looking tee shot. A lot of holes have the same blind tee shot issue. The lighting and green color make the holes and slope lines difficult to see. I thinks it's a decent first course that could be good with work. Thanks for the feedback.
All the bunkers are splines. I experimented with layering regular bunker textures but I thought the ring of rough they generate is quite ugly, especially in fairway bunkers. I am curious to know what other course designers opinions are on this. Is the ring of rough around a bunker mandatory?
Planting was by far the most time consuming part. The meter is well over half full so I am not sure I can make it much thicker. I am also curious to know at what point it starts to run into fps issues. Hopefully just adding 1 or 2 more plant varieties will be enough.
I will look at all the tee shots again as well as different green textures so that the lines can be seen better.
To be honest, I haven’t played the course yet but I like some of the ideas in the pictures. I wanted to address the bunkers and bisecting surfaces and rings of rough and offer some advice. NOTHING is mandatory in designing cool courses. Real life courses have bunkers the touch multiple surfaces and bunkers that have no rough around them all the time. Some of the greatest in the world do. Please don’t get caught up with “rules” in designing. It will only hold you back and it ends up generating courses that all look very similar. Splining bunkers can look great but the boreal theme edges don’t help out in the case. I would maybe suggest giving another theme a look. If you are going to connect fairway straight to bunkers (which think is awesome), try to make the edges match up to give a slightly better flow between the two textures. If you are cutting into the fairway a good ways, try making the edges of your bunkers slightly irregular to give a little more natural look. Please take theses as suggestions, not “rules”. It’s best to experiment with different ideas and themes to see what works and what doesn’t. Last thing I will mention is the lighting. Lower light creates shadows which creates depth and makes things pop a lot more. Again, just some thoughts for you to consider. You have a great looking start here and good luck going forward.
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MikeB
Amateur Golfer
Posts: 255
TGCT Name: Mike Branca
Tour: Elite
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Post by MikeB on Apr 27, 2019 16:44:35 GMT -5
Thanks for the feedback.
All the bunkers are splines. I experimented with layering regular bunker textures but I thought the ring of rough they generate is quite ugly, especially in fairway bunkers. I am curious to know what other course designers opinions are on this. Is the ring of rough around a bunker mandatory?
Planting was by far the most time consuming part. The meter is well over half full so I am not sure I can make it much thicker. I am also curious to know at what point it starts to run into fps issues. Hopefully just adding 1 or 2 more plant varieties will be enough.
I will look at all the tee shots again as well as different green textures so that the lines can be seen better.
To be honest, I haven’t played the course yet but I like some of the ideas in the pictures. I wanted to address the bunkers and bisecting surfaces and rings of rough and offer some advice. NOTHING is mandatory in designing cool courses. Real life courses have bunkers the touch multiple surfaces and bunkers that have no rough around them all the time. Some of the greatest in the world do. Please don’t get caught up with “rules” in designing. It will only hold you back and it ends up generating courses that all look very similar. Splining bunkers can look great but the boreal theme edges don’t help out in the case. I would maybe suggest giving another theme a look. If you are going to connect fairway straight to bunkers (which think is awesome), try to make the edges match up to give a slightly better flow between the two textures. If you are cutting into the fairway a good ways, try making the edges of your bunkers slightly irregular to give a little more natural look. Please take theses as suggestions, not “rules”. It’s best to experiment with different ideas and themes to see what works and what doesn’t. Last thing I will mention is the lighting. Lower light creates shadows which creates depth and makes things pop a lot more. Again, just some thoughts for you to consider. You have a great looking start here and good luck going forward. You should play the course. What I said was it looks inconsistent. It does not fit the course. What I said had to do with THIS course. Yes, generally sand crosses just 1 or 2 surfaces. This is actually in the TGCTours course guidelines. Now, onto THIS course, being in a sand trap 6 feet from the pin with no fairway or rough between the green and sand does not look good. Could it look good? Sure. A waterfall in the middle of the green could look good. Anything could look good. But if you're going to do it there should be a reason and a look. If crossing 3 surfaces with sand looks good, fine, but I haven't seen it.
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Post by doctanick on Apr 27, 2019 19:26:55 GMT -5
I never realized that you could change the theme after the course was built. It is amazing how much different the same course looks with different themes. It is really cool that the existing planting also changes. I like how the course looks using the swiss theme so I will swap it over in the next version.
Thanks for the tips. I appreciate it.
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Post by doctanick on May 6, 2019 16:57:42 GMT -5
Hi everyone! Version 13 is now live. This was a big update since I switch over themes from boreal to swiss. I also decided to redraw all the fairways and greens so the bunkers now look better. I also played with the lighting and weather settings a bunch. The meter is at 2/3 so I will look at adding more planting in the next version.
Overall I think the course is shaping up quite nicely. As always I appreciate any feedback you guys have.
Here are a few pics of the updated fairways/greens. 1st fairway 1st green 9th green
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Post by b101 on May 6, 2019 21:41:04 GMT -5
Looking better and better each time and all credit to you there - particularly like the improvements you made with sightlines a few posts back. I would echo what MikeB has said about bunkers next to greens and fairways; I think it'd look miles better if you gave the bunkers a bit more space from the fairway. For example, in the first fairway, you have your light rough/first cut at one constant width, then it just dies around the bunker, which looks odd and doesn't really happen in real life. If you were to move your fairway spline points away from the inside of the bunker so that the line of light rough stayed at that same, constant width, I think it'd make a massive improvement. Personally, I'd do the same with the greenside bunkers on the 9th, but that's more of a preference, as those look better and I see what you're going for.
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Post by doctanick on May 7, 2019 9:21:29 GMT -5
Looking better and better each time and all credit to you there - particularly like the improvements you made with sightlines a few posts back. I would echo what MikeB has said about bunkers next to greens and fairways; I think it'd look miles better if you gave the bunkers a bit more space from the fairway. For example, in the first fairway, you have your light rough/first cut at one constant width, then it just dies around the bunker, which looks odd and doesn't really happen in real life. If you were to move your fairway spline points away from the inside of the bunker so that the line of light rough stayed at that same, constant width, I think it'd make a massive improvement. Personally, I'd do the same with the greenside bunkers on the 9th, but that's more of a preference, as those look better and I see what you're going for. Thanks for the feedback. I wanted the rough to be thinner around the bunkers but perhaps the difference from the full width is a bit too much. I will look at either widening around the bunkers or making the rest of the rough a little narrower, or a combination of both.
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Post by doctanick on May 10, 2019 18:09:11 GMT -5
I tried some different ideas with the rough around the bunkers and greens. I eventually settled with narrowing the light rough and leaving some heavy rough around the inside of the bunkers and green at about the width the light rough was in the last version. Here is the first hole, now just 17 more to fix. lol
First fairway
1st green
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Post by b101 on May 11, 2019 0:35:14 GMT -5
I tried some different ideas with the rough around the bunkers and greens. I eventually settled with narrowing the light rough and leaving some heavy rough around the inside of the bunkers and green at about the width the light rough was in the last version. Here is the first hole, now just 17 more to fix. lol
First fairway
1st green
looks awesome
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Post by moxiematt on May 15, 2019 7:37:35 GMT -5
Agreed! Looking much better I think.
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Post by doctanick on May 25, 2019 18:19:01 GMT -5
Hi everyone. Version 14 is now live. I redid all of the fairway and green splines again so that the light rough is consistent. This course feels very close to finished so give it a try and let me know how it plays. As always feedback is appreciated.
4th fairway 8th green 9th green 11th fairway - added some bushes in the middle so that line of sight to the green is blocked if you play left
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