MAKING WATER EDGES : Jim Mattler
Here's what you need to do:

1. Duplicate your water shape and increase the size of the duplicated shape anywhere from a couple inches to a foot. You will also want to change the properties of this larger shape to wood.

2. Now select both the water shape and the wood shape so that both are highlighted with the red boxes on each point.

3. Using either the hill, bunker, or slope tool drop the elevation to your desired height.
This tells the architect to drop the inside shape the selected distance, but only have the actual slope changes occur in the space between the two shapes. Hope this helps.

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EDGE FOR TEXTURES : Mike New

It's the same as doing bunker lips, work from the heavy rough in eg:

Select your light rough as a new shape and duplicate it and inflate it by 2 inches, and then have both shapes selected and use the slope elevation tool and drop it 0.1 (you will have to change it manually as it defaults at 0.5 but will go lower if you type it in.) Do the same with the fairway edge going into the light rough, the green going into the fairway edge, and the tees going into the light rough, then you can either leave them or do a light smooth on the whole area to round out the sharpness of the edges if you wish.

Remember to do this last AFTER you are sure you have all your main elevation work done, and, it may add a lot of filesize to your course doing it over 18 holes so be wary of that too!

EDGE ADDITION : Chris Perry

I have been experimenting with drop distances and smooths, your right, smoothing a 0.1 will flatten it completely, and I meant just that hole's area in general, not the whole course, select the light rough shape and increase it a little and do a smooth on the whole area. And yes, you would have to work around delicate "walled" areas that you don't want touched at all. I have seen some tees where it bens down slightly instead of being a sharp lip, this may be from smoothing a .3 to.5 drop, or maybe increasing the outer shapes diameter a little more that 2-3 inches and using the slope tool to curve down the edge slighty, and not have to do a smooth on it at all.

Remember also that a light smooth over a large area will affect the elevations less than a light smooth over a small area, in other words, doing it on all the hole's shapes at once may have a less flattening effect than if you just did the smooth on one small shape.

EDGE ADDITION : Chris Perry

I would try using a .3 drop on the deep rough-light rough .2 on the light rough-tees and fairway, and .2 or .1 on fringe-fairway.

Make the outside shape 3 inches bigger (if possible), and always run the slope into the outer shape (outside the inner source shape).

Doing a light smooth (or a few) on the whole light rough area for the entire hole (because of the size of the area that you are smoothing) will take the sharpness off the edges nicely without losing the "cut's" entirely, though you will probably want to exclude bunkers or any deep walls around lakes etc. from the smoothing area for obvious reasons.

Removing Minimum detail may also help take the sharpness off them without having to do a smooth at all, plus that will decrease your course size and PD total instead of adding to it.

I would suggest tinkering on a flat test plot, and trying different things to see what settings you like best for the results you get, and maybe write them down, that's what I'm doing!!

EDGE ADDITIONS : Dave

The technique was inspired by KOC after seeing his tees on sawgrass. The Weed rough is always the longest grass then rough etc. Imagine a lawnmower cutting shorter and shorter until you get to the green.

Here's how I did it.

1. use as a shape.
2. duplicate
3. increase by 3 inches
4. select both shapes
5. bunker tool down .2
6. delete shapes
7. use as a shape
8. increase by 3 inches
9. change to same texture as shape
10. drop

When you optimize you can do all the way to the right on the lip. it won't change the shape. then do a couple of clicks for the large shapes. One hole I have just done increase the course to 9.5 meg with no optimizing. After I optimized it , the .ach file came down to 4.6 meg.

The only slight annoyance with this technique is the shadows on the vertical can be very prominant. Try it . It really adds solidity and substance to the course.

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SUN SPOTS : Frank Roorda

I talked to Ken McHale regarding the "Sun" Spots and I have a resolution for this problem.

1) Save the Course.
2) Exit The designer Completely
3) Open the Designer and the course
4) Compile the course.

The sun Spots go away!

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SHADOWS AND HORIZONS : Chris Perry

Shadows:

Taking into account your source image has a WHITE background do the following:

1) Bump up the contrast and lower the brightness so the image is very dark, (black) and the background is grey.
2) Decrease the color to 2 bit (2 colors) it will now be black on white.
3) Bring the color up to 24 bit (16 million) and apply a couple of blurs or softens to your liking! I have heard you can resize it 20-50% of the original source image's size, most likely to save on overall library size, havent tried that myself so experiment with it.

Most important!!! PSP will not create the proper 256 greyscale palette needed to generate the shadow properly, I have an Adobe generated palette here that works, if you need it I'll send it to you.

4) Load the palette in and Save as a new filename (tree1_S.bmp for example), S signifying it is a shadow.

Headgate decided on this because custom artwork (and the Library Creator) is intended to be used by "advanced" designers who are comfortable doing this kind of extra work.

Thumbnails are generated by the program, if you do not include a shadow, it (the shadow) will not render in the game as you said, if you do not include a top view, the objects will not show in the top cam, and if you do not include a tiny object, it will disappear at far distances (I'm assuming this).

Dunno about the size requirements for panos, the ones I have here I first converted from GBC panels (with the original authors' permission) into a 7168x400 frame. I found this artwork because it is in 24 bit bmp format to be too large (8M) so I reduced it by 50% and put it into a 3584x400 sky panel, and the only difference was the background is a little less prominent and has more sky this way, but I think it is a good tradeoff to save 5M in filesize.

400 pixels is a good height, as it will keep the sky from stretching out too much in 0* pitch camera angles. 300 pixels may be adequate as well, and will mean yet smaller filesize a little less sky and the background will be a little more prominent. Experiment with that.

In order to get it into the L/C you have to split it into 2 equal size frames, in the case of the 3584x400 it would be 2 1792x400 frames.

SHADOWS ADDITION : Mike New

You can currently get around that with PSP, but it will take a few steps.

1. Create a new image,
2. Define it as grey scale,
3. Change the very first colour in the palette (black) to the purple that is so popular with GBC objects, or any colour other than grey,
4. Negate the image. The purple will now be a neon-like green colour. Change that again so that it is white.
5. Save that palette

Not sure if you have to define as greay scale again or not. I don't believe so as I've had it work this way in the past.

SHADOWS ADDITION : Chris Perry

Also each object should have its own top and tiny, dont share the same top or tiny for all objects, if you want to use the same graphic thats okay, but rename it as different files for different objects, I set my object names up like this:

palmtree1_1.bmp
palmtree1_S.bmp (shadow)
palmtree1_Top.bmp
palmtree1_Tiny.bmp
palmtree2_1.bmp
palmtree2_S.bmp (shadow)
palmtree2_Top.bmp
palmtree2_Tiny.bmp

That way they are easy to find and differenciate.

I also find for objects that leaving 2 pixels space at the bottom and having it centered exactly in the middle of the frame (tree trunks etc) will mean you can leave the anchor at it's default spot it loads into and you wont have to fiddle with it. I have found if you have the image cropped to the bottom without leaving 2 pixels space it will look a little sunk into the ground and you will lose some of the bottom if you don't do it that way. It looks like you left some space at the bottom on yours, but those bent palms would be tricky, you'd probably have to move the anchors on those, or make the image bigger so the trunk meets the ground in the middle, but that would add unnecessary filesize to them I'd say.

SHADOWS ADDITION : Joe Wells

First off, any GBC object you might want to use, you can. You just need to remember to change them from .pcx to .bmp files. Secondly, every object has 3 companion objects that go with it (a shadow, a top view and a tiny view). For the shadows, I suggest you contact Chris Perry.

For the tiny, open up your bitmap image (assuming from here on out it's named tree.bmp) and save the color pallette. Increase the color count to 16-bit. Decrease the image size by about half or so (I'm not sure what the reccomended decrease is). Then apply the saved pallette back to the image. Save it as tree_tiny.bmp.

The overhead is a little tougher. For trees, I usually take the leafy part of the original image and cut off the trunk. Then I copy the top half of the leafy part and flip and paste it on the bottom to give it a rounded look. You can fool with this to get what you like.

Once you have all your images, open up your custom library and go to the 2d-objects section. Choose add and add you original image. Then double click on it so that you can set it's properties. You'll see options for the shadow, tiny and overhead images. The one thing you want to do in the properties area is set your collision rectangles for the tree. You can draw different areas on the original image and set the ball reaction properties for different parts of the tree. For instance, you can allow the ball to go through the leaves, but make the trunk effect the ball like a normal tree trunk would.

I'd suggest making a test library to practice adding 2D objects first before doing it to the actual course library. I'd also suggest adding a 3 to 10 pixel long strip at the bottom of your shadow image (make sure it's the same as the background color to help line up the shadow correctly in the game. But you can ask Chris about that one. He knows better than me. And he probably has some better explanations than the ones I've given for the other stuff also.

Hope this all makes sense. There is a help file in the LC program that is actually quite good at explaining how to set the 2D object properties.

SHADOW ADDITION : Brian Silvernail

In creating custom art for PGA 2000, there are a few differences compared to JN6. First off, instead of the last color in your object's palette determining the transparent area, in PGA 2000, it is the first color. Also, PGA 2000 uses BMP files versus PCX.

You actually don't have to include a shadow, overhead, or a tiny version of your custom object is you don't want to. The tiny version is only used for rendering the object at an extreme distance in the game. Also, the tiny version isn't used as a thumbnail in the architect; the architect automatically generates thumbnails for your custom library. You'll probably want to include a shadow for your object though. A shadow version of your object doesn't have to match the full-sized version of your object. To save some on file sizes, it can be reduced 25%-50% from the original object if you want. PGA 2000 will automatically size the shadow correctly in the game.

You'll also probably want to include a top view of your object. These will be displayed on the hole overhead in the game, and if not included, no objects will be displayed. The top view of your object can be any pixel dimensions you want. The transparent color is the same as objects. What I have basically done is sample an area from my tree object's foliage and create a circular blob that is meant to represent an overhead view of the object.

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CUSTOM TEXTURES : Michael Conner
Use custom textures, and in the library creator it will ask you what the name of the texture will be in the architect. Put a "signature" infront of the name. Like for my current project I name it this, "BB-Fairway". You can also choose the name of the texture in game, and I named it "Fairway". That way in the game it looks like the stock texture names, but in the architect all of your textures will be in one area.

Create some custom texures and put the architect name something like, "Scott-Fairway" and "Scott-Green" and "Scott-Bunker" etc. That way it will be easier to select the textures you want because they will all be in the same place when choosing textures.

CUSTOM ADDITION : Chris Perry

You may just want to put an "S" at the beginning, as not many characters show when viewing the thumbnails and it will be easier to tell what they are if you make the names small, otherwise some of the titles will get cut off.

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RAILROAD TIES: Frank Roorda

1. Draw your water shape and drop it.
2. Right Click on the water you dropped and select "use as shape".
3. I increase the size by 2 feet. I select properties again and select an appropriate texture I have created my own RR ties for example) and I drop it.
4. I select the water again and I right Click on it. I select use as shape and I increase the size of it by one foot.
5. I select Bunker down and drop the water an appropriate depth.
6. I Flatten the water to minimum. and your bunker walls should stand nicely.

RAILROAD ADDITION : Desert Rat

1. Same as yours except my 1st shape is the wall/lip.
2. Same as yours.
3. Now decrease (decreasing seems to give less shape paths crossed popups) the shape the desired amount depending on what you are creating (bunker, water, etc.) and choose water in this case.
4. Make sure both shapes are dropped, zoom in so you can right click on the outer wall/lip shape and select pickup with children.
5. Use the slope tool to lower to the level you want, the inner shape will drop mostly flat with nice clean walls.

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ROUTING HOLES : Joe Wells

1) Okay, skip the wizard. In fact, check that little box at the bottom so that the wizard never shows up again. I'll show you how to route one hole and the rest follow the same idea.

2) Pick a spot on the landshape that you want as the first tee. Make a small shape about 20 feet by 20 feet that will be the teebox, making sure to use a teebox texture for the shape. The shape doesn't have to be exactly what you plan on using because you can always change it afterwords.

3) Now, hit either the 'D' key or choose 'Tools'/'Hole Definition Tool'. A little window will pop up that allows you to route out every hole. Assuming you are starting with hole #1, zoom in on the teebox shape you just created and place the five spots for the tee areas, making sure you place them on top of the teebox texture.

4) Zoom back out and start adding shot points for the hole. These shot points should follow the shape of the fairway you plan on using. I usually use about four or five shot points to help the AI play the hole properly. The last shot point you add will be the center of the green (or it should be). Once you've placed about 4 or five of them, just click and hold over top of the last one and stretch it out until you get the distance you want (you can see the distance indicator in the hole definition window go up and down as you move it around). You might also want to move the other shot points so that they are a logical distance away from each other.

5) Once you have set the shot points for one hole, close the Hole Definition Tool. Now choose, 'View'/'Shot Paths'. You will see the shot points you just placed show up on the land plot. Now create your fairway shape around that shot point path keeping the path in the middle of the fairway shape as best as possible. Make your green texture shape putting the last shot point you placed in the center of the green shape.

6) Once you've done this, go back into the hole definition tool and choose pin positions and place you pin positions on your green texture.

7) If you wanted to make this hole cross over water, you have two ways to do it. You could either split up your fairway shapes. One leading up to the water and one starting after the water. Then just put your water shape in between them. Or you could use one whole fairways shape and put the water inside of it. Remember, the PGA designer does not allow you to overlap texture shapes so be careful.

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DETAIL OPTIMIZATION : Chris Perry

Do an optimization (with as high a setting as you have to to get the best reduction) on the weed rough but don't check Children, it should leave everything else alone, and, try to do some minimum DO's on your pot bunkers, as all the work done on them adds a lot of poly info that aren't necessary, you can probably see how dense they are by bringing up the mesh (Ctrl+Alt+T).

DETAIL ADDITION : Steve Knoblock

That's a good suggestion. Watch out that you don't have remove from children checked unless you really want it. It appears that Headgate reduced the effect of the detail removal process by preventing "leakage" of removal into child shapes. What that means is that a green will hold its shape through many more detail removal cycles than it used to.

Shapes sitting on the base shape are NOW more protected than they were previously from the influence of detail optimization.

Indeed, the greens seem to hold up the best of any shapes now, perhaps because they sit atop so many layers of shapes. To give you an idea of how much detail removal changes a green, it took about a dozen or more detail optimizations for a complex bunker to go from extreme depth to a tad shallow, yet usable. A finger of hill running onto the green went from a bump to a break (actually improved the play).

I still feel comfortable with optimizing the base texture of my course, except I am a little wary now that I may have to restore that bunker if I go further.

When you're looking to get the point density count down to a reasonable level, don't overlook cart paths, streams made from cart paths, bunkers and other small shapes. These often can use huge amounts of detail relative to their size. It seems that the mesh can hold broad elevations with little detail, but small areas of intensive elevation can hold large amounts of detail, much of it excess. I discovered a cart-path made stream running the length of my course had over 20,000 points in it!

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