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Post by B.Smooth13 on Mar 18, 2019 10:54:27 GMT -5
Since beginning to work with this tool, I've thought of a lot of various settings/features which would be useful to have built into the tool. Almost all of these are things which would make the import/transition process from OSM tracing to an in-game course more variable, potentially save on cleanup work in the in-game designer, and may make the entire part of this process that's carried out upon importing the course easier. I doubt I'm the only one that's thought of this, so feel free to chime in with ideas - but I'll get us started: - Ability to set spline values - currently, various types of textures import with varying spline widths. Sand defaults to 0, fairways are 3, and I believe greens are 1.7. The ability to dictate to the tool what spline widths you'd like to have applied upon importing OSM would be helpful in being more precise with mapping, and once you learn how various widths effect different types of surfaces in-game, you could map in preparation for importing splines at those values.
- Spline attribute options - the tool currently imports different textures with different default 2nd textures - sand, greens, and tee boxes have varying widths of heavy rough (compared to the primary textures default width), and fairways default to light rough. While this may well be the option that the user decides on designing with, there are plenty of times when having heavy rough outside of bunkers is not desired, for example. In this case, with a light rough band around fairways, any bunkers with default heavy rough as a secondary texture that are near the fairway will result in significant "scalloping" as those heavy rough areas overlap with the light rough secondary texture of the fairway. An option in the tool to pre-define what secondary texture, if any, you'd like to have applied to various types of primary textures could be a HUGE time saver for in-game editing.
- "Smooth" cart paths - I'm not entirely sure how possible this one would be, but if it is, it may be the biggest time saver of them all. The tool currently imports cart paths correctly, but often times those paths aren't appropriately "level" on the terrain. There is a different standard for what is level irl and in-game, but having level cart paths on TGC courses is a big sign of polish, it just makes the course much more visually appealing. If the tool was somehow able to take those areas marked as cart paths in OSM, apply some sort of slight leveling/terrain blurring along those paths (set to a width defined by the spline width), creating in-game cart paths that are more level and require little/no manual smoothing within TGC designer, it would be an absolutely HUGE time saver. To be clear, I'm not talking about taking the terrain where the cart paths are and making them perfectly flat, but having paths that side at a significant angle from one side to the other just slightly leveled out, as you would do in the designer.
- Generate planted areas from OSM mapping - another one that I'm not sure is possible, but would again save a ton of time. We can map out "wood" in OSM, which imports as a splined out area showing where we need to plant trees. It would be ideal if the tool could take those "wood" areas and auto-plant trees at a set spacing (could be an option in the tool, how "dense" do you want wooded areas) with a set variation in type of tree (another setting). This could also be an amazing concept if transferred into grassy areas - map out "tall grass" in OSM, and the tool imports those areas with a set density and variety of grasses for the chosen theme. Again, this one seems like potentially the longest-shot of possible additions, but it would save an immense amount of time with in-game planting.
Those are the first 4 that immediately come to mind for me, though I'm sure there are a lot more that others have. I think much of what I've mentioned above could be accomplished through an "Advanced Options" menu somewhere within the tool, giving the user the option to dive deeper into the import process, but not requiring the average user to worry about it. These are just ideas, one's that I'm entirely uncertain of their possibility, but since this is a constantly evolving tool I figured it wouldn't hurt to throw out a couple of things I've thought of along the way.
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Post by chadgolf on Mar 18, 2019 12:49:09 GMT -5
@b.Smooth13 These are all good suggestions. Ironically, ease of implementation is in the opposite opposite order you expected, given my skillset... Easiest) The planted areas from OSM is possible and I could do this for trees soon, but reuse the code for other things in the future. I REALLY need to train someone how to look at the Course file .jsons so the community can share the work of mapping objects and themes to IDs. Anyone want to volunteer to lead this task? Once the mapping is done, this is easier, but getting to the mapping would take me hours and hours where I can't do other work. My approach here would be to utilize the spline as a polygonal shape. Then using a seeded random number generator (so it's the same every time), insert a certain number of objects per area of the spline, and keep generating them until the right density is met. Will probably randomly alter the heights/rotations as well. I'll look into existing approaches for video game terrain generation as well. Medium) Do you just run the flatten landscape set to 0.0 height along the spline? Thanks for thinking programmaticly about the flattening area matching the cart path. Do you just click every yard/meter or so? Hardest) Spline sub-menu. I'm not sure where to put this in the menu so that it wouldn't completely overwhelm users who find it. A lot of people are intimidated by the UI and I don't have a great user-flow already. It would be fastest if I implemented this in a file where the options are all laid out and I use defaults if the file isn't there. Are you comfortable changing numbers in a file. Maybe if the file looked like this? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAML#Example |
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Post by gamesdecent on Mar 18, 2019 13:58:13 GMT -5
I REALLY need to train someone how to look at the Course file .jsons so the community can share the work of mapping objects and themes to IDs. Anyone want to volunteer to lead this task? Once the mapping is done, this is easier, but getting to the mapping would take me hours and hours where I can't do other work. I'm pretty comfortable finding EPSGs now, feel free to shoot me a message when you have some time and let me know what this entails. |
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andyf
Weekend Golfer
Posts: 76
TGCT Name: andyfox21
Tour: CC-Pro
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Post by andyf on Mar 19, 2019 2:33:14 GMT -5
Chad,
I'm not really sure this is relevant to the LIDAR type stuff however is there any way in which the trees and plants can be made 'free' to use on any scheme rather than us being stuck with certain tree and bush types?
Andy
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Post by B.Smooth13 on Mar 19, 2019 7:37:36 GMT -5
Easiest) The planted areas from OSM is possible and I could do this for trees soon, but reuse the code for other things in the future. I REALLY need to train someone how to look at the Course file .jsons so the community can share the work of mapping objects and themes to IDs. Anyone want to volunteer to lead this task? Once the mapping is done, this is easier, but getting to the mapping would take me hours and hours where I can't do other work. I think I'm following what you're saying here in regards to connecting various objects in different themes to an ID tag, which the tool then uses to place said object...right? Regardless, if you want to share the the info on how to do this, I'm sure I and others would jump into it and see what we can learn. This sounds ideal, really. The only caution I would give is something I battled on Nicklaus @ Reunion, and have noticed on the other couple of courses I've imported thus far - the tree scaling that the tool applies can really skew sizing. The Nicklause course, in particular, had the imported trees around half the height of the smallest possible size you can plant tree's at in-game. So I basically had to delete all of them and replant, otherwise all of the other planting around the edge of the course would have made those trees look comically out of scale. I have seen a readout on that right side panel in the tool when processing a course import that said something about tree scaling, but since there isn't an option to force that scaling (that I'm aware of), I'd recommend making sure that we aren't importing trees from LiDAR that are so much smaller than any other trees we can manually plant in the game. My method is to take either the fuzzy circle brush (page 1 top right) or the super soft fuzzy circle (2nd to last page top left) in flatten mode, then depending on the severity of the slope I'm trying to even out, either click and drag to apply a gentler flatten (fixing a small section that looks too tilted) or spam-flatten (rapidly click as I'm moving along the path) to quickly level out a section that's more tilted. 90% of the time I'm spam-flattening because it's quicker and works better, but sometimes it can over-do things when you only need a small amount of leveling. This would be great! I'm 100% good with having access to these settings via a file that can be edited in Notepad++ or something. The only other game I've designed in is open-sourced, and ALL of the backend design work is done through various settings (scale, height min/max, lighting values, etc.) in readable files that have to be edited. In lieu of an additional "Advanced" options button that opens up a new window showing these types of options, I think an editable file would be great. I don't really know how many people will care to change this stuff outside of the game anyway, it's just something that I find tedious to do for every single spline that I want to change, so it makes sense to be able to define these settings from the start. |
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Post by chadgolf on Mar 21, 2019 22:29:21 GMT -5
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Post by chadgolf on Mar 24, 2019 20:52:22 GMT -5
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vladthemert
Amateur Golfer
test
Posts: 237
TGCT Name: Vlad Mert
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Post by vladthemert on Mar 28, 2019 13:15:08 GMT -5
Chad noticed our lidar data from environment agency in uk sadly in ASC format would be great if this format was supported
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andyf
Weekend Golfer
Posts: 76
TGCT Name: andyfox21
Tour: CC-Pro
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Post by andyf on Mar 28, 2019 14:08:52 GMT -5
Not all the UK lidar is in asc format. When you go on the EA website and look for the available times you need to select LIDAR point cloud and that is in the correct format but the coverage is limited. I put up a post a few days ago showing the coverage of the point cloud data
Andy
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Post by chadgolf on Mar 28, 2019 15:09:24 GMT -5
ASC and the other text formats are not always classified in ways that are useful to make golf courses.
There are probably some public tools or utilities to convert these to las or laz. Maybe give them a try and then write up a tutorial for others if you get it to work! Would be very helpful!
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vladthemert
Amateur Golfer
test
Posts: 237
TGCT Name: Vlad Mert
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Post by vladthemert on Mar 29, 2019 7:49:55 GMT -5
thanks andy and chad I have found this useful tool will convert and decompress Lidar even can alter the data it seems. What understand ASC uses different ponts system like not going be able to convert to LAS as someone tried throws errors. However you can convert from LAZ to LAS. rapidlasso.com/LAStools/found instructions to decompress on us gov site www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-do-i-decompress-usgs-lidar-data-laz-14-formatHow do I decompress USGS lidar data in LAZ 1.4 format? USGS lidar data in LAZ 1.4 format has been compressed using a recently updated tool from LAStools. Until the commercial software industry implements direct support for this new compressed format, the user will need to decompress the LAZ 1.4 data to LAS 1.4 format before importing into common GIS software. USGS recommends using the following procedures: Download the open-source LASzip tool, available at: rapidlasso.com/laszip/. Extract the tool into a new folder on your hard drive. Under that folder, browse to the ”\LAStools\bin” folder. Run the executable file “laszip.exe”. This will bring up the laszip user interface window. Click on the “browse…” button. In the “directory” field, enter the Drive Letter of the LAZ file(s) location (ex: D:\), then click “go”. Browse to the folder where your .LAZ files are located. In the “wildcard” field, only turn on the “.laz” choice. Double-click on one or more .laz file(s) to load into the upper left window. If you want to decompress all the .laz files in the folder, just click the “add” button. The footprint of each file will appear in the center graphical window. When all desired .laz files are loaded, click the “DECOMPRESS” button, after ensuring that the “LAS” option is checked on. Click “START” on the ensuing RUN window to run the laszip command. The output .las file(s) having the same prefix(es) will be placed into the same folder as the input file(s). Click on the “README” button for details on how to run the command-line version of laszip. |
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International Record: 7-0-0
