APCD basics 3
We now have the shapes drawn in and we can use them as guides for meshing the hole. This "automatic" meshing method was actually discovered by "mVan" (his discovery was released via the forum at Links Corner. You can find a link to there in the links section) All designers owe him a debt of gratitude for this as it has made meshing courses so much easier than previous methods.
The mesh is the core of the course, it is made up of verts, joined together by edges which create faces. more details regarding this can be found in apcd basics 1. Every vert is an elevation point that can be moved up or down to create the elevations of the course. The faces formed by the verts and adges can be textured to simulate grass. The better the textures the more realistic your course will look. below is an example of a grass texture I created using a picture from my digital camera and then heavily editing it in Photoshop.
Ok back to the mesh. mVan's method was to mesh the course using the "terrain painter" Go to the terrain tab/surface tab and select the terrain painter icon or press p. Adjust the settings as in the pic below and you are now ready to automesh!
Maximise the top view of your apcd (right click on top view window then press w) Centre the area of the course you want to mesh and make sure that the hull is ON (shift-d) and your shapes you drew earlier are also ON (shift-b) Every left click of the mouse pointer will now add one vert and the surrounding edges will snap towards it creating a nice clean mesh. Using the shapes as a guide start to add verts around them in an even manner like in the picture below. Sometimes the painter will add two verts by mistake. Keep an eye out for this happening and if it does simply undo the last move and try again until you have completely meshed in your fairway area.
Once you have done the fairway, then mesh in the green area and tee areas too. The next step is to texture the relevant areas with their new textures. To do this go back to the face tab and click on the "drag select" icon. By left clicking on one of the fairway faces and holding the button down, you can now drag the curser around and select all the fairway faces. Once you have them all selected you can choose the fairway texture in the left hand side selection window and then click on the "apply texture" button. You will see the texture of your fairway change in the main view window like in the picture below. Do the same to the green and tee areas.
Once you have textured the green area using the above method you can use the "painter method" to add more verts inside of the green to create the fringe area and texturise it the same way as before. I've also added a few more verts evenly inside the green for use when we elevate later. You will see from the picture below that I've also added a ring of verts around the outside of the green and also around the outside of our fairway shape. This is very useful when we elevate later on and will make making natural elevation of slopes a lot easier. In addition I've moved some of the verts so that they are a little more evenly spaced and organised.
The next stage once we are meshed in and textured is to begin the elevations!