More elevation tips
Elevation tips continued..........
Here are some of the more common elevation techniques that I use.
MOGULS OR SMALL HUMPS AND HOLLOWS
Here I create a ring of verts using the terrain painter technique and then finally add a vert to the centre. All the other edges should snap to the centre to create this look.
Occasionaly you will get one edge or more that refuse to snap to the centre vert. Go to the terrain tab and select the edge subtab and then click on the turn edge button as shown in the example below. Click on the edges and they will snap into line. This is a very useful thing to learn and you should always be on the lookout for misplaced edges like this as they will mess up your intended elevations in a BIG way.
Go to the perspective view so you can see your elevation change in 3d. You can then select the center vert and raise it upwards in the Z axix (F8) to make a small hill or lower it to make a small hollow. The height of the vert in feet can be seen in the bottom right hand corner of your view screen and can help to make sure you elevation changes are accurate. In this case the vert started off at 100 feet and I raised it just over 5 feet as you can see below.
This raising and lowering of verts forms the basis for any elevation change in the apcd.
RIDGE OR STEPDOWN
Lets say we want to place a ridge or a stepdown on a fairway to make one side or another more favourable to hit the aproach from for example.
First of all the ridge - I'll add some verts along the area I want the ridge to run as in the example below. I'll then raise the centre spine of the ridge in just the same way as I raised the centre vert in the mogul example before. The difference this time is that I will be selecting multpiple verts to move all in one go. I can select the required verts one by one by clicking on them while holding down the "shift" key. If I need to de-select one of the verts for any reason, I can hold down the ctrl key and click on the offending vert to de-select it while still keeping all the other verts highlighted.
I'll then go to the perspective window and raise the verts to make the ridge.
To make a drop down on one side of the line of verts I'll select the verts as below and then lower that side a few feet to make the entire fairway lower on that side.
This technique can be used to make a subtle risk reward situation where the higher side with the better view of the aproach into the green may be protected by some sort of hazard. The player can opt out by taking the lower route away from the danger but then his view of the green is compromised. This sort of strategy rarely works for those who use the top cam to aim but for those who play their links golf without the artificial aid of the top cam view this can be a very effective strategy. There are no top cams on a real golf course!
Next tutorial will cover how to keep realistic elevations across texture boundaries. This is where many designers struggle to recreate the natural falls and slopes of the land across rough, fairway, fringe and green.