Landscaping, particularly trees.

[cliffs]

I have a course that started out with the Harvest theme but I found it looks and plays so much nicer with the Swiss theme.

My question - when planting trees and by trees I mean a lot of them, do you designers plant every tree or do you tend to plant trees close to the light rough/fairway and use generated trees to fill in the rest?

I'm not talking about trees that are 50 yards from any hole just ones that are part of the actual playing areas. Say an area in between fairways that has 75 trees, plant them all or just the ones close to edges?

FTR, I struggle mightily with landscaping. Tis why I have only one published course way back in TGC 1.

[ErixonStone]

I use as many auto-gen trees as possible

[SindreRev]

Like Patrick said, Auto-gen will spare your plant meter as well. Try also to "single" plant the trees. Multiplant will take up a lot of space in the plant meter. I would suggest that you delete an area along the waypoint line. Then fill in with trees like you mentioned.

[cliffs]

Thanks guys, what I am trying to do is mark trees that are the same with distance marker so as to use the same tree in that spot. I am going about 2 rows of trees in unless they are thick as thieves.

[Terry Grayson]

May 27, 2019 14:47:32 GMT -5 cliffs said:

I have a course that started out with the Harvest theme but I found it looks and plays so much nicer with the Swiss theme.

My question - when planting trees and by trees I mean a lot of them, do you designers plant every tree or do you tend to plant trees close to the light rough/fairway and use generated trees to fill in the rest?

I'm not talking about trees that are 50 yards from any hole just ones that are part of the actual playing areas. Say an area in between fairways that has 75 trees, plant them all or just the ones close to edges?

FTR, I struggle mightily with landscaping. Tis why I have only one published course way back in TGC 1.

Depending on the course and or style planting Ill do this differently

as you described above... 

1. When first designing course I would route etc, then turn on auto gen trees and move slider until I am happy with intended results

2. I always manually plant the trees and such around my tees, fairways, greens etc and plant those properly

3. I would ten go to the exterior of the course (or as you described 50 or more yards away) and just behind the tree line I would manually plant bushes, sinking them a bit into the ground

and filling up the gap without using too much of my plant meter...  meaning I would give the illusion of depth and deep woods or plantings when in reality I just put some bushes behind the trees

to simulate a lot of growth and depth

Now on tropical courses or ones that I will not have a huge amount of trees I will manually plant each and every tree.... On Ardoilean (even though there arent any trees) I manually planted every single bush sinking every bush into the ground to follow the topography of the terrain the other fellas built, trying to give a sense of depth and scale

Hope all this makes sense....

Terry

[cliffs]

Glad I asked, great feedback ..

[lessthanbread]

I’ll echo what the others have said on the trees. I always set the trees and plants sliders to the max and just delete what I don’t want.

You said you struggle with landscaping. Are you talking about planting or making hills and valleys with the sculpting tools?

[b101]

Basically, what Terry said - on Swiss, there's one awesome dark green bush that's about three of them attached as if it's three corners of a square. If you make that massive, then sink it into the ground behind the first row of trees so that it's pretty much just the top of the bush showing, it works a treat. The other trick is to use sculpting to help you. If you make a load of hills behind the trees, you don't need to plant as much. Also, think about where you just need a few trees to block visible space for flyovers etc - you don't always need to plant the whole plot.

If you haven't yet done it, set your lighting now before getting to grips with your planting. Nothing more annoying than finding a better lighting late on and having a load of trees casting shadows where you don't want them...

Edit: some WIP examples from my current Swiss project that might help - not perfect yet, but might give you a few ideas. Most trees, apart from those lining fairways, were autogen.

The right hand side of hole 8 (about 4 seconds in) is basically just trees, a few bushes on the treeline and rocks (shadows help cover up some sins here). Same with left side of 5 (18 seconds), but that's less completed.
Front left of hole 7 (12 seconds) shows use of trees to block and again, a bit more sculpting to narrow your line of sight.



I'll try to get a really good screenshot of hole 11 (the par five) where I've properly blocked out the background with bushes - the clip here starts a bit too late.

[cliffs]

May 28, 2019 22:45:47 GMT -5 lessthanbread said:

I’ll echo what the others have said on the trees. I always set the trees and plants sliders to the max and just delete what I don’t want.

You said you struggle with landscaping. Are you talking about planting or making hills and valleys with the sculpting tools?

Planting

[lessthanbread]

I like layering my planting with first a patch of grass. If I really want it to pop I’ll use one or even two of the flowering grasses and then put different bushes on top of the grass. Also sink trees into the ground for more variety

[linkslover]

I used as many auto gen trees as possible too to save on my plant meter. Saying that, I'm not afraid to delete them if they need deleting, and I'll often add more trees if I think it looks better.

[jwtexan]

Would basically just like to echo everyone else. Auto-gen is a dirty word at times, but not when it comes to trees or even hills.

I will let the plot auto-gen those things, and then craft the course around it and bulldoze the land and a path through the trees as I see fit. You sound like you are nailing it when it comes to trees actually in play. I plant just about everything within 100 yards in any direction of my hole (and sometimes much further when it comes to things in sight line). But for the outer edges of the course, when you are just going for "fill," auto-gen will save that devil yellow line from filling up too much too quickly.

[indolor]

May 28, 2019 4:07:52 GMT -5 SindreRev said:

Like Patrick said, Auto-gen will spare your plant meter as well. Try also to "single" plant the trees. Multiplant will take up a lot of space in the plant meter. I would suggest that you delete an area along the waypoint line. Then fill in with trees like you mentioned.

I like what I see here in this thread. A lot of opinions that I agree with. Recently I decided to renovate my backyard. I build a new terrace, planted a lot of trees. It's nice to stay in the summer under the shadow of a tree and drinking a cold beer. In all this process I was helped by professional landscapers with the design and work. They used only the best materials and worked very fast. I am pleased with their service. Acceptable price for work. Hope my experience will be useful for all of you!

[lordiron]

Shows us your project!

[jobruilen]

Landscaping can be pretty difficult, but I would love to practice it one day. I have some friends who're really good at this. Soon, I'm planning on buying a piece of land in order to build a house. Then, I'm going to hire someone from www.jscustomlandscaping.com in order to help me with the landscaping part. I really want this project to be something that my children will inherit in this house. We're currently living in an apartment, but we've been saving money for a while now and we are ready for this kind of investment. We shall see what the future is going to bring