Links LS According to Firehead

ARNOLD PALMER COURSE DESIGNER NOTES

Since I started on my first course, one of those things I dread with APCD was adding verts and turning edges. Doing this tee to green for 18 holes is just too much sometimes. I did learn this neat trick a few weeks ago which enabled me to save (in my opinion) at least 30% in the time I spend with the course. To have smooth flowing objects, the ring of verts around and in these objects are very important. It will minimize those sharp edges and dark shades to make the course look a lot more natural. So here's the second tip from my site which I think can help most newbies at APCD and maybe the rest too.

For the tutorial , I will use a basic shape but this will work also even for complex shapes . But I guess there are still some shapes whose ring of verts you have to add and edge to turn manually. Also, all the images below are thumbnails so you can click them for a bigger pic.

Requirements for this tutorial:

The designer should be knowledgeable with the following APCD functions as this revolves around these functions.

a. Texture Mapping or shape addition

b. Edge Sharpness

c. Scale (all scaling done on the XY axis)

d. Vertex Selection

Our objective is to add a ring of verts outside (yellow) and the inside verts (red).

Insert your shape or map textures. Just even out the verts. Even for complex shapes, this I believe is a must. This will keep your mesh clean and manageable. Lets start.

Select the verts of the object

Using the scale tool, enlarge the object up to where you want your external ring of verts are.

Using the split tool on the edge tab, select all the edges inside the shape. After all are selected, click any of the selected edges.

This will be the result. A new set of verts inside the shape.

We now want to scale these verts so they will be at the same size of the original verts.

Like so.

The texture is still the same for the whole object now. So we need to remap the external ring back to rough. So we select the terrain of the whole object.

Deselect the inside faces.

Map the selected faces as rough. This will give us an Edge "0" to the newly mapped faces.

So just go to the Edge tab, select the inside edge,

Set sharpness to -1 or 4 and we are back to the original shape with a ring of verts outside. Sometimes this could be enough but on some instances, you will want another ring of verts inside this.

So we start all over again, select the edges, split them using the split tool.

Select the inside verts.

Scale them like so. We're all done. Ring of verts inside and outside the object. Without manually adding a single vert and turning a single edge.

COMPLEX SHAPES

Most of the time, the shape will be complex, not just a plain circle. The principle is still the same but do the following adjustments.

When selecting the inside edges before splitting, make sure you deselect the edges joining two internal verts (red on picture above).
After splitting the edges, you will get the inside verts. Do not scale them at one time. Do them by section such as in pic above. I did them say, the verts highlighted on the yellow box, then the blue, then the green. You can also move the verts as you scale to keep them centered.

Lets try this example below. Notice how I haven't touched the verts yet. What I want to see is that there are only a few verts in the middle, say 1 or 2 (as this shape is not that complex)

OK. So you still have to turn the edges so they all point to the major verts. I have also evened out the spacing of the verts so no two verts are too close or too far.

We now select the edges inside the shape and again, we deselect the connecting edge between our two center verts.

Split the edges. We now have 2 distinct set of verts around our 2 major verts. We select the verts around the major verts one at a time, scale them to enlarge them then reposition if necessary.

Like so.

Most of the time you get something like above, especially for shapes where your major verts are not on the center. all you have to do is move them all (while they are still selected) until they look pretty centered.

Again, the purpose of this tutorial is not to eliminate verts and edge manipulation but to minimize them. Most importantly, before you try anything on your course, be sure to SAVE and KEEP BACKUPS!!!