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Post by Doyley on Feb 28, 2019 11:04:17 GMT -5
Show off some untouched pics from your Lidar import!
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Post by theclv24 on Feb 28, 2019 21:06:20 GMT -5
Here's an import of the full plot around the front 9 of Crystal Downs: Unfortunately I'll need to chop this down a little bit to save the object meter, but if Chad ever devises a way to preserve the object meter, this would be epic.
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Post by gamesdecent on Feb 28, 2019 21:59:13 GMT -5
Here's an import of the full plot around the front 9 of Crystal Downs: Unfortunately I'll need to chop this down a little bit to save the object meter, but if Chad ever devises a way to preserve the object meter, this would be epic. Do landscape raise/lowers take object meter the same way sculpt raise/lowers do?
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Post by chadgolf on Mar 1, 2019 2:44:12 GMT -5
gamesdecent It turns out that if you paint enough terrain it will eat up the object meter. We're talking in the order of hundreds of thousands paint clicks though. The whole object meter seems to be worth one million, and each terrain click is worth about 1.
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Post by theclv24 on Mar 1, 2019 10:34:11 GMT -5
gamesdecent It turns out that if you paint enough terrain it will eat up the object meter. We're talking in the order of hundreds of thousands paint clicks though. The whole object meter seems to be worth one million, and each terrain click is worth about 1. Chad do you know if the object meter registers a "landscape" terrain click the same as a "sculpt" terrain click? My working theory would be yes, but see below. Full disclosure, I've been using this designer for almost 5 years now and I still don't really know what to use the landscape tool for, I just use the sculpt tool exclusively. If you need clarification on the differences, though, someone here should be able to provide more help than I can.
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Post by gamesdecent on Mar 1, 2019 10:42:15 GMT -5
I use landscape (blue brush) exclusively and don't know what the sculpt (red brush) tool is used for lol.
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Post by theclv24 on Mar 1, 2019 11:05:40 GMT -5
I use landscape (blue brush) exclusively and don't know what the sculpt (red brush) tool is used for lol. Oh, maybe I inverted the names. I also use only the blue brush, whatever it's called. I've only ever used red when you get that weird situation where fairway doesn't appear when you lay it down, so you raise it up with the red brush until it appears.
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reebdoog
TGCT Design Competition Directors
Posts: 2,742
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Tour: CC-Pro
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Post by reebdoog on Mar 1, 2019 11:11:05 GMT -5
I was going to say...I guarantee that I've used enough sculpting clicks to eat up the meter if that's what it takes... maybe it is the red vs blue. In other words is the lidar data modifying the terrain like a sculpt? Or is it simply redefining the default terrain? I haven't done this yet so can anyone tell me if the course BEGINS with the lidar info in place or do you load it in and the terrain MOVES?
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Post by gamesdecent on Mar 1, 2019 11:33:24 GMT -5
I was going to say...I guarantee that I've used enough sculpting clicks to eat up the meter if that's what it takes... maybe it is the red vs blue. In other words is the lidar data modifying the terrain like a sculpt? Or is it simply redefining the default terrain? I haven't done this yet so can anyone tell me if the course BEGINS with the lidar info in place or do you load it in and the terrain MOVES? You create a new plot, import the course file into the .exe program and when it does it's thing, you open the game, load up your course and all the elevation changes are there. So it's modifying it after you generate the plot. Because my mask didn't work on my first try, my object meter was 100% full when I opened it back up. theclv24 said he is around 30-40% when the mask works correctly. And then you would sculpt the surroundings by hand. chadgolf , it would be interesting to see if there is a way to make the elevation changes in the same way the game generates the initial random terrain so that it's PRE-object meter. Or if red vs blue brush changes have different meter cost, that might be something else to test.
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Post by SkinniePost on Mar 1, 2019 12:14:01 GMT -5
I was going to say...I guarantee that I've used enough sculpting clicks to eat up the meter if that's what it takes... maybe it is the red vs blue. In other words is the lidar data modifying the terrain like a sculpt? Or is it simply redefining the default terrain? I haven't done this yet so can anyone tell me if the course BEGINS with the lidar info in place or do you load it in and the terrain MOVES? You create a new plot, import the course file into the .exe program and when it does it's thing, you open the game, load up your course and all the elevation changes are there. So it's modifying it after you generate the plot. Because my mask didn't work on my first try, my object meter was 100% full when I opened it back up. theclv24 said he is around 30-40% when the mask works correctly. And then you would sculpt the surroundings by hand. chadgolf , it would be interesting to see if there is a way to make the elevation changes in the same way the game generates the initial random terrain so that it's PRE-object meter. Or if red vs blue brush changes have different meter cost, that might be something else to test.
Not sure if it helps or if it is correct (since HB never explained), but my understanding of the red/blue is that they are different scales of mesh. The red mesh/brush is coarse mesh vs. the blue being fine. That is why the red brush can't effect mesh that has been converted to blue... At least this would explain how they work and follows other 3D rendering programs mesh manipulation. The green and fairway brushes autoconvert to blue, which is why they match up horribly with the natural terrain. And the bunkers are a whole issue on their own, haha.
You could test the import by trying to use a red brush... If it works the terrain is still red mesh, otherwise it will do nothing. The whole thing seems strange to me, since a lot of people blue flatten the entire plot? So that has already increased the data points of the mesh by at least a scale of 2, and the fact they are flat data points makes no difference?
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Post by chadgolf on Mar 1, 2019 18:29:20 GMT -5
I was going to say...I guarantee that I've used enough sculpting clicks to eat up the meter if that's what it takes... maybe it is the red vs blue. In other words is the lidar data modifying the terrain like a sculpt? Or is it simply redefining the default terrain? Because my mask didn't work on my first try, my object meter was 100% full when I opened it back up. theclv24 said he is around 30-40% when the mask works correctly. And then you would sculpt the surroundings by hand. chadgolf , it would be interesting to see if there is a way to make the elevation changes in the same way the game generates the initial random terrain so that it's PRE-object meter. Or if red vs blue brush changes have different meter cost, that might be something else to test. Not sure if it helps or if it is correct (since HB never explained), but my understanding of the red/blue is that they are different scales of mesh. The red mesh/brush is coarse mesh vs. the blue being fine. That is why the red brush can't effect mesh that has been converted to blue... At least this would explain how they work and follows other 3D rendering programs mesh manipulation. The green and fairway brushes autoconvert to blue, which is why they match up horribly with the natural terrain. And the bunkers are a whole issue on their own, haha.
You could test the import by trying to use a red brush... If it works the terrain is still red mesh, otherwise it will do nothing. The whole thing seems strange to me, since a lot of people blue flatten the entire plot? So that has already increased the data points of the mesh by at least a scale of 2, and the fact they are flat data points makes no difference?
I've done A LOT to try to optimize away the resource usage. When I started, we were at 400% of the resource bar. I would say that the ideal target now is 25-40% of resource bar usage. If it's higher than this, there's something going on and you should post in the help forum. The main thing to note is that there is an "automatic" background/cliff removal feature that's optional. When run it will roughly approximate the land around the the course and should only cost a few percent of your meter. Might be easier than trying to use the terrain tools to do so. Another note, is that if you want to fill it by hand, I highly recommend using the RED TERRAIN SCULPT tools to remove your cliffs. The lidar data is imported using BLUE so you can make the red brush as big as you want and you can't mess up the lidar data. -------------------------------- Now the longer discussion: The random background is not terrain in the usual sense but is generated by something called Perlin noise: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perlin_noiseAs far as I've found, I can't even disable this noise which is a big hassle. In an ideal world, I would use the TERRAIN SCULPT to make the lidar ground, but the Perlin noise is ADDED TO the Terrain SCULPT so I'm forced to use the overriding landscaping brushes to make the lidar data. This is why people have almost always used the blue brushes. Try it: make a huge flatten and try to flatten your course using red brushes. You can't, it's going to look exactly the same but shifted up/down. Both terrain brushes use the resource meter equally when you use them in these quantities. It's possible that it triggers the resource bar based on file size, it's very inefficient to store the heightmap in brushes, but it's what's been implemented. It turns one number (4 bytes) into about 50 bytes. -------------------------------- There is another secret I've discovered but it's not available to us. There's a few "high quality" courses in the game that are possibly based on real locations. These are made more like "the other game's" lidar import. There's a base unity object that represents some source of lidar imported heightmaps. Unfortunately, these are baked directly into a custom theme for each of these locations. I promise that if something more efficient comes up, I'll switch to it immediately. There's a few other optimizations I can do, but they would take weeks of effort and I'm not sure it's worth it. They involve a lot of cutting edge techniques with dynamic spatial resolution, modeling and interpolation, and potentially things like KD-trees. But ultimately, 30% seems like a fair trade-off for the designer's time in these early releases. Maybe I'll get an anonymous PM to provide any other secrets, but I wouldn't wait on that.
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Post by gamesdecent on Mar 1, 2019 18:51:32 GMT -5
I've done A LOT to try to optimize away the resource usage. When I started, we were at 400% of the resource bar. I would say that the ideal target now is 25-40% of resource bar usage. If it's higher than this, there's something going on and you should post in the help forum. The main thing to note is that there is an "automatic" background/cliff removal feature that's optional. When run it will roughly approximate the land around the the course and should only cost a few percent of your meter. Might be easier than trying to use the terrain tools to do so. Another note, is that if you want to fill it by hand, I highly recommend using the RED TERRAIN SCULPT tools to remove your cliffs. The lidar data is imported using BLUE so you can make the red brush as big as you want and you can't mess up the lidar data. -------------------------------- Now the longer discussion: The random background is not terrain in the usual sense but is generated by something called Perlin noise: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perlin_noiseAs far as I've found, I can't even disable this noise which is a big hassle. In an ideal world, I would use the TERRAIN SCULPT to make the lidar ground, but the Perlin noise is ADDED TO the Terrain SCULPT so I'm forced to use the overriding landscaping brushes to make the lidar data. This is why people have almost always used the blue brushes. Try it: make a huge flatten and try to flatten your course using red brushes. You can't, it's going to look exactly the same but shifted up/down. Both terrain brushes use the resource meter equally when you use them in these quantities. It's possible that it triggers the resource bar based on file size, it's very inefficient to store the heightmap in brushes, but it's what's been implemented. It turns one number (4 bytes) into about 50 bytes. -------------------------------- There is another secret I've discovered but it's not available to us. There's a few "high quality" courses in the game that are possibly based on real locations. These are made more like "the other game's" lidar import. There's a base unity object that represents some source of lidar imported heightmaps. Unfortunately, these are baked directly into a custom theme for each of these locations. I promise that if something more efficient comes up, I'll switch to it immediately. There's a few other optimizations I can do, but they would take weeks of effort and I'm not sure it's worth it. They involve a lot of cutting edge techniques with dynamic spatial resolution, modeling and interpolation, and potentially things like KD-trees. But ultimately, 30% seems like a fair trade-off for the designer's time in these early releases. Maybe I'll get an anonymous PM to provide any other secrets, but I wouldn't wait on that. Yeah, if I can get down to 30% of the object meter, that's more than reasonable for the tens of hours of time it would take to sculpt by hand. And most RCR's aren't very resource intensive anyways because you can autogen the surrounding trees without using any of the object meter, and from there it's maybe some houses and rocks and tall grass. I've just got to get my mask to work from 3DPaint. Thanks again for all of this!
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Post by theclv24 on Mar 1, 2019 21:02:13 GMT -5
gamesdecent You could also try using GIMP for your masking. Not sure if you have tried it or are familiar, but it's a free editing tool that can do way more than I will ever be willing to learn. It more than easily handles the masking task.
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Post by gamesdecent on Mar 1, 2019 22:23:43 GMT -5
BOOM!
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Post by Doyley on Mar 2, 2019 0:41:13 GMT -5
Not bad for my first course ever!! I'm practically an RCR wizard now!! PS - if anyone wants the files for Cabot Cliffs let me know - this is about as far as I can take it haha!
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