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Post by turkmcgill on Mar 3, 2022 8:58:51 GMT -5
Is there a difference?
When I first started using the Course Editor I played around with the various Raise and Sculpting tools. I couldn't figure out the Sculpting options at all, and I didn't notice a difference between Landscape Flatten and Landscape Raise. So I have made all three of my courses using the Flatten tool.
Recently, I've some mentions of using Landscape Raise (especially on Greens). I did some experimenting and I still can't tell the difference. Can someone enlighten me? Thanks!
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Post by sroel908 on Mar 3, 2022 9:02:18 GMT -5
Is there a difference? When I first started using the Course Editor I played around with the various Raise and Sculpting tools. I couldn't figure out the Sculpting options at all, and I didn't notice a difference between Landscape Flatten and Landscape Raise. So I have made all three of my courses using the Flatten tool. Recently, I've some mentions of using Landscape Raise (especially on Greens). I did some experimenting and I still can't tell the difference. Can someone enlighten me? Thanks! Landscape flatten allows you to lift or lower the land, and also, as the name implies, flattens the area within the brush. Landscape raise allows you to lift or lower the land, but does not change the contours and characteristics of the land within the brush.
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Post by fergdawg on Mar 3, 2022 15:18:09 GMT -5
Yeah, what sroel said. You can raise and lower with flatten, but the area you're capturing will also be flattened out. Whereas with just raise, you raise or lower but maintain all the sculpting that was already there. I am finding more and more that 'raise' is a more useful tool than flatten, because I don't necessarily want to lose the characteristics. For greens and bunkers, flatten is king (kind of, in the case of bunkers), but for like removing blindness or lifting a green entirely (without losing all your hard-won contouring), use 'raise'.
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Post by b101 on Mar 3, 2022 15:44:13 GMT -5
Ultimately, you need and want perfect command of both. I raise and flatten within bunkers, I raise and flatten within greens/fairways etc and often, it's subconscious because the amount of time in game means those tools just make sense now. A few key pointers:
1) The biggest one: as you are learning, play with the heights and sizes of brushes and move the camera around so that you can see UNDER the brush. Look at what your moves are doing before you click. That way, you learn to adapt what you're doing and see the effects of the changes you make to the brushes. Try out: different heights, brushes, raise/flatten. 2) Look at what is there first and don't totally flatten a greensite before you start out. There's little worse than watching someone destroy interesting natural contours to go on and make a bland green with a tier on it. If there's something good there, treat it with respect and gently raise/flatten around it until you have integrated that feature into the green. That's where unique holes come from. 3) Raise preserves natural interest, flatten suppresses it. 4) For a green, you will want elements of both. A green with zero flattens (hello, Black Salt Valley) will likely be a chaotic mess whereas a green with purely flatten (hello, Little Brook Manor) will be dull to putt on. 5) Practise raising and flattening whilst clicking and dragging, whilst spam clicking as you move around. 6) Try many different methods for bunkers over different courses (but not on the same course)
Could go on and on - there's loads, but when you start nailing sculpting, everything comes together.
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Post by fargo on Mar 3, 2022 15:53:53 GMT -5
I recommend learning to use the landscape raise tools, especially the completely fuzzy brush on page 4 and the almost completely fuzzy brush on page 1. I use these two tools lots.
Let's just say you're lifting up some land:
Landscape flatten will smooth land under the fuzzy portion of the brush in order to bring it closer to the reference area (either the clear inside area of a brush or the central point in the case of a fizzy brush), and that will involve either raising or lowering each point of land in order to smooth it out a bit in relation to how the land has been raised.
But the landscape raise tool can not lower any point of land (if you're trying to raise land), it will only raise. The fuzzy brushes will raise the land more the closer it is to the reference point and less as you get further away from the reference point. But no point will end up lower than how it started. Similarly if you reduce the height in the negative to lower land, then no point of land effected by any brush can possibly end up raised - only lowered.
Because there's no smoothing algorithm applied, you've got to be a bit more careful what you do because you can end up with lumps. I swap between raise and smooth constantly to try to create natural contours.
Not sure how much of that made sense. In any case it's good to learn to use both I think.
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Post by ErixonStone on Mar 4, 2022 12:45:07 GMT -5
Imagine you have two areas of land. One area is 3 feet high and the other is just 1 foot high.
RAISE: Set the height of the raise brush to 1 inch. Cover both areas. You will now have an area that is 3 ft 1 inch high, and an area that is 1 ft 1 inch high.
FLATTEN: set the height of the flatten brush to 1 inch. Cover both areas. You will now have one area, all set to the average height of the covered areas. Assuming the brush covered the two areas evenly so that the same amount of land from each area is inside the brush, you will now have one single area that is set to a height of 2 ft 1 inch. This is the average height of the area under the brush, plus the height adjustment (we set it to 1 inch)
When you work with fuzzy brushes, the fuzzy area represents some percentage factor of the adjustment, so you'll see the land move less. The wider the fuzzy edge, the more gentle the effect will be. In the middle of the fuzzy edge is about 50% effect.
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