After completing this process once already on a different plot a couple of years ago, for the second time I have started meticulously painting in the fairways of this awesome course.... This time though with an accurate lidar elevated plot courtesy of Linkster.... Is this part fun? No. But hopfully in the long run it will be worth it....
May the force and the verts and all the sand grains and everything else be with you! Love to see it!
Finished Courses - Main: Amedal (fictional), Nine Bridges (real)
Other: Austin, Sheshan, Kauri Cliffs, Le Golf Nat. Updates: Whirlpool, Royal Lytham, Royal St George's, Chicago, Chambers Bay, Munchen Nord E
Working on: 2 fictional courses + a couple things...
Nice work mate. Have you tried inserting shapes, to save time?
The only pitfall to Linksters DEMs is the sheer numbers of verts that you need to navigate through/around. It can take some extra time to adjust the verts or paint around them where necessary.
I know that the "insert shapes" function has a poor rep (and its probably not used alot by many designers), but Linksters courses now open it up to some strategic use, imo. I have used it to more-quickly paint all the fairways on a couple of Linksters courses I am working on - and to really good effect. It's not perfect (by any means) and its use will always be a designer-by-designer preference thing, but I reckon it's at least worth a trial on courses with Linkster's DEMs.
Anyway..... keep up the good work!
Colin
Completed: Golf Club of Houston (Redstone); Banff Springs 2025 (Thompson 18 and Tunnel Mountain); Mauna Kea 2024; Royal Sydney Golf Club.
Working on another Sydney course with an eye across the ditch too.
I didn't give it a thought at all. I will give it a shot though, the extra verts on the plot may even work in it's favour.
Anything to save some time would be great, such a time devouring process on this particular course. ( And I am probably guilty of trying to be too accurate as well )
Hi Todd,
On my first attempt with a Linkster download, Mountaintop, I used the Insert Shape for the cart paths. it wasn't as bad as some members suggested, but I'm not sure it saved much/any time. (It feels as if you have saved time when you see a nice piece of cart path suddenly appear, but after going over it to clean it up, I'm not so sure there is any saving?). On my next course, Crooked Stick, I moved/added verts and, for me, it was more satisfying, but perhaps that says more about me?
As Colin rightly says it is certainly worth giving it a chance, but whichever way you do it, I wish you good luck. This course will be special.
I agree with Ian, adding verts individually to paint the textures on the DEM plot is the way to go. I prefer to plan my work and draw lines/polygons in QGIS and export them on top of the Google Earth overlay. This gives me an alignment aid on where to add verts and keeps the textures edges smooth. I add verts with the terrain painter tool or move the vert to the texture line if it is nearby. Moving a vert horizontally can disrupt the DEM surface if it is moved excessively.
APCD 1.jpg (726.64 KiB) Viewed 4074 times
APCD 2.jpg (762.61 KiB) Viewed 4074 times
I think most of Sage and Co. draw lines with APCD shapes to plan the surface textures. In my experience the downfall with this is that displaying shapes in the APCD seems to make the mesh editing tools draw laggy. With the lines drawn on the overlay you can cover some distance painting textures in an APCD session of an hour.
Hi Linkster,
That is exactly what I do. As soon as I no longer need the shapes I delete them. That goes for all shapes I use unless I forget to delete some. In the end I have a course with none or close to no APCD shapes in the data.
Sage.......
If there is one thing ................ummmmmmmm.......I can't remember.