Terrain questions

[steggs11]

Thanks for the terrain tutorial, which although it was a bit out of date gave me enough pointers to get my terrain loaded.
A couple of questions I have though:

1) My elevation data includes objects (ie not surface, but canopy). This means I am having to manually level bulges that are trees or groups of trees, before replacing them with tree objects in the game. Is there a good way of doing this, as the ways I am trying are really not having great results where the trees/bushes are on a slope?
Specifically, is there a way that you can level to a given height, or rotate a selection to match a slope once you have flattened it out?

2) As I said in my intro post, I am a complete novice and I have made a rookie mistake ... my course is situated right near the borders of the terrain data I have imported. That means that if I hit a big slice off the 14th tee the ball might just disappear off the edge of the map, and the overall aesthetic is not quite what I was going for! So ... is there a way I can import more terrain once I have started, or do I need to start again (one corner of my course is very close to the edge of the terrain tiles I imported). I have some sort of idea that if I can extract the dxf file, I may be able to convert it back into ASC (which is the format the UK Defra survey data comes in) and weave it with other tiles, but I am not sure how to extract the dxf including all terrain changes I have made.

(3) Is there any way to create greens/tees/ etc while looking at the height layer? My blueprint image is not perfectly aligned to my terrain, so my best guide to where eg the green should be is by looking at the terrain in height layer. Currently I am dropping marker posts around all the spots where I want tees, greens, bunkers etc, and then having to flip to surface layer to put them down, and then flipping back to see if they are correctly placed, before deleting the marker posts. I'm not really expecting there to be a better way, but if there was I would feel dumb not to have asked!

(4) The hotkeys don't seem to work in the height layer ... should they?

Many thanks in advance for any help!

[BrianZ111]

I have a newer terrain tutorial I've been sitting on for 5 years because I haven't gotten around to finishing it. I'll upload it "as is" in the coming days. It's not finished and it mostly centers around using Global Mapper so I don't know how useful it is to most people but it should still be some use at least.

1) I've never attempted to do a course with data that wasn't bare earth data. There isn't a handy flatten along contour feature in this engine. Flatten just flattens to horizontal so that would pretty much wreck things. Some combination of smooths and/or simplifys may work but I don't know what combination. You'd have to experiment I guess. Sorry I can't be more help on this.

2) Yes you can import more data or import over the top of your old data. There isn't a way to export out though that I know of though. What you could do is take a tile of data with just the missing area, line it up and import it. Save as a different file name before you do this in case you mess it up though (voice of experience ).

3) No, unfortunately not. It'd be really nice if we just had everything in one layer. It's almost impossible to get the blueprint to align perfectly throughout the course. Rather than use objects to line things up with I just keep adjusting the blueprint. I get it lined up on the bunkers or tees of a hole and then work on that hole and a few neighboring holes. When I start to get farther away from the hole I lined it up on, I go back into the height layer and check it and adjust if necessary. Even if things weren't quite right on a hole you drew shapes for already, the shape of the shapes won't need adjusting so it's easy enough to adjust the blueprint and adjust the position of the shapes.

4) Which hotkeys are you referring to?

[steggs11]

Thanks for your help Brian!

I will try to document what I did for importing terrain which was using U.K. Defra survey data (which I think was all that is available for my corner of the world!) it was a 2m survey, and the breaks on the green are pretty accurate, so it may be useful for others wanting to model from U.K. data.

For eliminating trees, it sounds like I am on the right (only?) track ...
I have found that the following works passably well (but takes ages to clear a large area)

1) select small areas of the region to be flattened, preferably in an approximately regular hexagon. Set as your red zone.
2) select a small runoff area around this in yellow
3) select the straight run off option (looks like a triangle)
4) flatten to either lowest or average
5) without changing the selection, wait for a few seconds for the software to catch up, and then use the scroll wheel to move your selection to the desired height
5) move the red and yellow zones to the next hexagon on the slope and repeat. Keep going until the slope is covered
6) Select the whole area as red and surround it with yellow run off. Smooth inside the red zone using 1,25. If necessary do it again with a different setting.
7) Widen the selection slightly, and then use simplify inside the red. It usually only takes one or two goes to flatten it out.

This doesn’t produce a perfectly smooth slope, but since it is going to be covered with trees and bushes that shouldn’t matter too much.

I have only been doing this in areas close to the line of play. In other areas just covering the whole region with bushes or trees seems to mask the lumps! And for the distance the lumps actually look quite realistic.


Thanks for the tip on importing more terrain. I will try today!

For Hotkeys:
In the surface layer, I choose ‘view’ ‘hotkeys’ To get a list of 10 slots that I can assign to objects (press F2, ‘change’,select an object and then modify the parameters). Then when you press 1-0 keys, it assigns the object you need with randomised size within the parameters set. It cuts out a few steps when placing things individually.

In the height layer, there is the option to ‘view’ ‘hotkeys’, but pressing the assigned hot key does’t seem to have any effect. When I am placing markers in height layer, this would be a godsend rather than having to fiddle around with select, edit, duplicate, place, edit, scale, change scale to try to randomise the look a bit .... with the object you are selecting to copy moving in space when you select it, and nearby objects getting in the way etc
But hey-ho!

Thanks again!

[BrianZ111]

Thanks for creating that document. I think it will help people for sure. I've replied to your e-mail regarding that and we'll get it up on the website soon.

As far as removing trees and buildings from the terrain data, that sounds like a reasonable approach to me. I don't have any better ideas for working within the game engine. One possibility that might be easier is fixing the problem areas in another program, such as Meshmixer, before you import it into the game engine. As I mentioned in the e-mail though it looks like you can download DTM data (bare earth) from that UK site and avoid the problem altogether if you aren't too far along with changes to the terrain to start over on that part. Any shapes or trees wouldn't have to be redone if you just replace the current elevations with the DTM data.

You're right, the tree placing hotkeys don't work in the height layer. What I like to do is create a pool of trees/vegetation off to the side on the plot of about 300 square yards. I make it similar to how a forested area on the course may look. I use the hotkeys to do that because you can randomize the heights that way but after that I don't use the hotkeys anymore. I just pull form that pool of trees and put them into place where I need them as I go. Actually usually I duplicate the entire pool first so I keep two pools of vegetation because then when I deplete one I don't have to create another. I just make a copy of the entire existing one again. This works great for foresting as well. You can make a shape the size of the area you want to forest, drag that shape over your pool, do a selection the same size as the shape, then duplicate those trees/vegetation and place them where you want them. When you're completely done with planting you delete these pools.

It is kind of a pain to select individual objects/trees when others are getting in the way. You just have to move what it selects out of the way to get to the one you want and move them back when you're done. There isn't any other way around it that I'm aware of.

[steggs11]

#slightly embarrassed look#

Thanks for the tip on importing DTM data instead of DSM ....
I feel a bit daft for not having noticed that before - it would have saved me many hours of pain!