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Post by jacobkessler on Jun 28, 2019 23:51:34 GMT -5
What the title says, essentially. I’ve tried to design from a flat plot, but it turned out to be what I consider my worst course as it was just way too flat throughout. If you remember Frostwood, I want to avoid doing that again.
My concept for the next course I'm working on is a rather flat, Midwestern course. The main problem I have is that even when designing from a non-flat plot, I tend to flatten my surfaces too much and it leads to a rather bland and boring look (for those of you that know my past work, Frostwood and Usui Ogawa are examples of this).
The thing with this course is that I want to start it flat because the default terrain is just too busy for what I intend to be a polished, country club look. I just worry that doing so will send me down a path I’ve been down too many times before.
So, for designers who’ve designed off of flat plots before, how do you make your terrain interesting throughout, from a pure sculpting standpoint?
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Post by Han on Jun 29, 2019 15:24:46 GMT -5
Have you got any ideas for holes already worked out ? If you have great .......If not then get your thinking cap on ! For my way of thinking at least, once you have the initial idea for the style of course you want then getting some hole designs figured out is your best starting point when using a flat plot. The more you have the better (and in theory the easier it should make doing the terrain), but ideally you want at least two or three that will run consecutively from one another. Don't worry too much about them being perfect at this stage, just rough ideas will do for now. If you can conjure up some hole ideas start putting them down on the plot (again just very roughly for now), and if possible lay down a "potential" routing for the remainder of the holes - nothing set in stone, just something that may help you figure out other hole designs in terms of yardages, shapes etc. This routing step is entirely optional but again can make things easier in the long run. Once you have done all of the above then you should now be at a point where, depending on how you personally can "visualise" things, those first holes you have put down will automatically start to determine how the terrain should be or at worst will help you form some ideas for it...….you may have already started to form/sculpt it anyway without even thinking about it when you were putting the holes down. Hopefully the rest should naturally follow on from there. That's sort of what works for me at least I'm not sure if that's anything like what you were actually asking for but I hope it helps anyway
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Post by jacobkessler on Jun 29, 2019 16:11:18 GMT -5
No, that’s definitely helpful! In fact, I have probably 9 of the holes completely figured out as to what I want them to be. Luckily they all fit into the style I’m going for (think Scioto CC Oakland Hills) but I think what’s a bit daunting for me is that if I start at a certain elevation, I might run into issues with the water level. Do you start with large-scale “macro” sculpting to put hills and valleys into place, or do you just take it one hole at a time and fill in the inbetween areas later?
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Post by Han on Jun 29, 2019 17:36:23 GMT -5
It shouldn't really matter what elevation level you start at because of the placeable water unless you mean if you ended up going too "low" and run into the base level water. If that's what you meant then just start as high as you want bearing in mind how the background will look. On your second point.....to start with I let the holes determine what I do with the terrain so I suppose I kind of do it one hole at a time, but eventually as/when you get a few holes in place and things start to take shape a little bit it really just comes down to personal preference which way to do it but that is influenced massively by how much, and at what point you can visualise the look of the overall plot. So in the beginning put as much of a hole down as you feel happy/comfortable with then sculpt the terrain around it until you get it something like the original vision you had for the hole, then basically just rinse and repeat that process until the look of the terrain start to form in a way you like. This is why I said about having as many holes running consecutively would make it easier because they will influence each other and what you do with the terrain as you go through them. There will be a lot of swapping and changing I can assure you but as you work through the holes just make sure the land forms in a natural way between them and the rest will almost take care of itself. Whether to do the "inbetween bits" later or not really will be determined by your routing and how close together your holes are, but again it's down to personal preference. TLDR : Basically I just figure it out as I go along really. The main thing is making sure everything flows nicely and looks natural
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Post by jacobkessler on Jun 29, 2019 17:45:28 GMT -5
Cool, that makes sense. I actually started a bit of a notebook to put my general elevation ideas down in and I think I’ve found the lowest point of the course, so I guess I’ll just see where I end up!
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