Planting and smoothing?

[Deleted]

Hi all,

Sorry to post here but I'm just not sure what I should be looking for at this point. I have my course (Engineers) with OSM and heightmap finished with TGC Tools and am wondering what you think the best places to look for learning how best to complete the final steps of a LiDAR course in the TGC Designer are. No idea what I should work on or read up on first.

After a quick playthrough without touching anything (and some pins that were literally impossible - I hit the stroke limit on a hole) the terrain is interesting enough that I want to see this course completed.

[chadgolf]

Canuck's tutorials are my best guess.

And maybe turn the course to slow and soft.

[Deleted]

Does setting the course to Slow and Soft change how it edits? The end result won't have super fast greens: the club decided to limit the extent of their re-contouring by keeping green speeds under Stimp 10 instead of the 12-14 common at more exclusive private clubs.

From what I found it looks like I should get to know the Spline tool pretty well. All I remember from TGC1 was brushes that were pretty imprecise with fine-tuning shapes. Also, is it possible to edit splines with an Xbox controller (on PC of course), or would I have to use a mouse for that? Sorry for being such a novice, I'm just excited by all the possibilities your tools have opened up and would like to give it a shot.

Just while I'm here, does anyone know if the background within a theme can be changed? I picked Rustic because the grass colors looked like a good match, but there's these big mountains in the background that don't really work so well with a Long Island course. If not then I'll need to select a different theme.

[chadgolf]

0) Definitely watch Canucks TGC 2019 Tutorials:

youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMfOamKMuHDtDwDy5DUSwgog7Kvqhoeq8

1) The lidar greens are very realistic and in my opinion don’t hold up well to firm and fast.

2) yes Canuck only uses an Xbox controller to edit on PC, and I onl use Xbox as well. You can edit splines but it takes some getting used to.

3) Yes the themes have different backdrops. Press right trigger to go to course editor settings, then select environment? Then backdrop? That’s from memory but it’s somewhere around there.

[Deleted]

. 0) I'll watch some of his playlist tonight!

1) Oh, ok for playability. I didn't plan on firm and fast. Maybe moderate to moderately firm for tournament conditions and med. soft for regular play. Green speed would probably be around 120-130 or so ideally. The Alpha I made to play test (horrible but revealing) on console had 136 green speed and it was a touch on the fast side. Fairway roll I intend to dial back further to make the course play a smidge longer.

2) Sounds like I'll be fine using at as well then. I think splines would be more intuitive to me than brushes would anyway.

3) I'll look into that sometime this weekend, good to know about!


The most surprising thing so far is that I was blown away by just how well the greens and most of the fairway contours transferred into the game. There are a couple small areas that will need terrain changes, where maybe the LiDAR data wasn't quite right or things didn't line up so perfectly, which I expect will be really hard for me to do properly And then planting might be a pain as well, that I'll need to read up on for sure.

Lastly, there are a few bunkers that have little grass islands in the middle. I used rough for them on OSM but none came through on the course generation. Any idea what the best way to fix this is?

Sorry it's a lot of questions. All that should have me covered for most of the next few days or so getting my bearings with the designer and such. If it seems to be going pretty well I'll move my course out of the 'claimable' section

[chadgolf]

Yeah things tend to work surprisingly well. The few bad areas are probably due to time and not necessary any bad data. Courses change bit by bit.

For islands inside bunker, you’ll have to either use brushes or make two c shaped bunker splines. Its a known limitation of the designer.

[Deleted]

The three main 'bad spots' I noticed were one green edge that was a little too close to a sharp dropoff (hole 14a i.e. 14 or 15) and also two back tee boxes on 16 and 17 (17 and 18 in the game since I had it as 19 holes) that are the same. Even Google Earth's 3D function has issues with the back part of tee box on 16. You very well may be right about courses changing over time, I know that fairways and greens tend to drift a bit and perhaps the same happened with the 16th tee. Your recommendation would be try not to touch the elevation stuff at all? If so that saves me some work for sure.

Oh, ok. If they go close enough will it merge them in a positive way, or does it have to be completely separate bunkers? The little bit of time I spent fooling around with brushes on Xbox I couldn't figure out how to put rough over where the bunkers were. I'm sure it's simple but couldn't figure it out my first go.

[chadgolf]

It's possible, it could also just be bad data. Use your best judgment.

Yes, they will merge in a positive way, it's an interesting trick. You can use splines or brushes. Just experiment around in a new course until you find a look you like. Then do your real course.

[Deleted]

Apr 5, 2019 21:45:10 GMT -5 chadgolf said:

It's possible, it could also just be bad data. Use your best judgment.

Yes, they will merge in a positive way, it's an interesting trick. You can use splines or brushes. Just experiment around in a new course until you find a look you like. Then do your real course.

Just thought of another idea: what if I import the OSM again and change their shape on that so that it's two separate bunkers, will that work as well?

I'll try my best with that. Hopefully in the next couple days I'll be able to get started.

[gamesdecent]

For bunkers with islands in the middle, I don’t even trace them in OSM. On Sweetens Cove, the islands were raised so it was easy to tell what was sand and what was island so I just brushed them in by hand once I was in the designer.