Resurrect Timber Ridge course that closed in 2014?

[Brettster]

I just heard about a local course that is close to where I work that closed in 2014 - Timber Ridge Golf Club. See pic attached below... It had an island green on a drivable par 4, really interesting features and not too long. Another hole was a drivable par 4 protected by a bunker in front (number 15).

So, my problem is, I'm not sure how to go about pulling LiDAR data? Will it go back to 2014, and will it be correct? I tried grabbing some LiDAR from Indiana and I have one 2011 .las file which seems like maybe that would work?

Also, how would I draw it in OSM when there is nothing there on OSM to show the course? Is there somewhere to pull older OSM data from 8 years ago? If I want to bring all this into Chad's tool, do I have to have OSM data to do it? I do have some OSM 'similar' data from Golfbert.com website - here's a link: https://golfbert.com/courses/Timber_.../15573:Hole_18

I hope someone could help with this, or has done something similar?

Thanks in advance!

[Brettster]

Hi jpotas ,

Yes, that's what I expected... I'm trying to get the splining done, however I've not done any previous splining and trying to find the fastest way to get it done accurately. I used to have a video linked on YouTube from LiDAR King, but I see now it's been made private.

Any quick tutorials you can recommend on Splining from OSM?

Thanks,
-Brett

[Brettster]

Hey jpotas - I have the first 5 holes splined... it's going to take some time to finish, that took me about 1.5 hours. There were some things I didn't know how to handle,

1.) Water hazard is 'water hazard' on Hole 3, but needs to be 'lateral water hazard' on Hole 5 (I made it 'lateral water hazard').

2.) Hole 5 is an island green, no idea how to handle the water hazard - being circular, and how to handle area that is not fairway on the island, but can be played from. Called it 'rough', and made 'water hazard' wrap all the way around the island.

Hope to have all 18 done by Wednesday.

[jpotas]

Brettster , I should know this for sure but I don't think that TGC differentiates between a water hazard and a lateral water hazard. I think it treats them all the same. So no worries on holes 3 and 5. I mark everything as a water hazard when I spline. Somebody please chime in if it makes a difference in TGC.

I reworked your splines for the water on the island green. I know the way I did it will work well, not sure what would happen if you had the water over the whole area. Chad's tool may or may not have put mulch everywhere. I figured better safe than sorry, it will 100% work the way I did it.

Anything not marked as fairway, green, tee box, rough, water, sand trap, or cart path will automatically be heavy rough when imported into TGC. Anything marked as rough in OSM will import as light rough. So you did good marking the island green area rough, unless of course it is heavy rough.

One tip, you don't don't need a ton of spline points, especially on fairways. Spread them out along straight areas, a little closer around curves. When editing, less splines is way, way easier!!

[Brettster]

jpotas - thanks for updating for me... I thought there were some differences between 'lateral water' and 'water hazard' in TGC2019? Maybe I'm mistaken.

Just to let you know, I finished 6-9, it didn't take as long, and I hope to get through the back 9 here fairly quickly, but probably not tonight... I still have questions about how some of this will turn out? For example, should some (or all) of the holes have fairway wrapping around behind the green, instead of having it end in front of the green? Also, have a look at #7, there are 3 pothole looking grass bunkers (at least that's how they appear about 100 yards from the green in the middle of the fairway. I used the Area tool in OSM and called them all 'rough', is that how I should do that?

If you look at the course layout in this Golfbert site, that is what I am following, and it seems to show where fairway was/and was not, but I can't be sure... maybe I should run some of this by someone that actually played the course and get their opinion? Here's a link to Golfbert site: https://golfbert.com/courses/Timber_.../15573:Hole_18

I'm just not sure how accurate everything has to be either - I've heard it can make the course look blocky if you don't put enough points in? All for now... I still can't imagine why we don't have a way to save this OSM data, once we're done splining everything... or also, one other thing. If this old 'historical' image goes away, it seems the OSM splines appear on all the other images as well? If that's the case, it would still be useful, but of course, you would have to have someway to 'overlay' this old imagery over the top of the newer images, as most of the course is now farmland/corn fields in the new images!

Thanks again... look for how far I got tonight, and I'll plan on finishing tomorrow night, likely... finally Then you can take it and run it with LiDAR through Chad's tool and I'll have the course design file.

(**edit - I stuck with it and finished all 18 holes... all are now in OSM). If you could please grab LiDAR jpotas and run it all through Chad's tool, email me the final results, I believe you already have my email address. I will message it to you just in case.

Thanks,
-Brett

[jpotas]

Brettster , you are all set. Course file is in your email. Here is the mask file, everything looks good.

[PKR]

While he is correct about using fewer points being easier, I tend to do "interesting" bunkers with points quite close together so that I can go back and make them look as they do in real life. I did a tutorial on the process a while back when I was creating Creighton Farms but I'm not sure where it is now. It can be a pain to do, but the results can't be beat.

[Brettster]

I would love to see your tutorial PKR , any chance you can locate it? I've wondered about more points turning into more detailed course looks - must be true? I also was just time-strapped as the OSM page was pre-2014 when the course closed, so wasn't sure how much longer it's going to be around.

[PKR]

I have searched high and low on this forum and on the HB studio forum but can't manage to find it. In a nutshell what you do is this..
after you spline and bring in the course from chads tool, take the measure tool and double click with it on each spline point around the bunker then delete the spline and select the circle bunker brush (first one on page one) and shrink it as small as it can go. Pick a spot in the middle of the bunker well away from the edges and click until the bunker mesh appears (might take a couple clicks). From here it gets tricky but with practice you'll catch on. If you move the brush away from the mesh and click again you will notice that the meshes try to merge together. This is the important piece of information because what you are going to do is basically 'pull' the mesh in one direction or the other. When the edges of the bunker are very close together, you're going to have to click and if the mesh goes where you don't want hit undo and move very very slightly away from the mesh that 'jumped' and click again. This can be a tedious process but if you look at the first hole bunker at Creighton Farms, you'll see what can be achieved. It takes some practice and you need to keep in mind that the amount of 'pull' is directly related to the distance between the mesh and the brush AND the other meshes already around the brush. Practice and you'll have it in no time I'm sure. The objective in the splining is to hit exactly on the edge of the bunker, the objective in the meshing is to not go over center of the measure points.

[Brettster]

Thank you jpotas - you're appreciated! Can't wait to load it and have a play, even if I just run it on my TGC2019 PC software tonight, maybe pull it into Course Designer to get started on 'Next Steps', which I have to guess are about 70%-80% of finishing this thing? Does anyone have any calculations on that (time spent OSM/Chad's Tool, vs. time spent in Course Designer finishing)?

jpotas - also wondering, which Theme you used? I understand that can make quite a difference with trees and how bunkers/lakes turn out? So, I see you found EPSG as 3533 and also that the file is 3.2 MB. Is that small for a course file? How big can the course file get? Does it depend on how much of the 'Resource Meter' you have left when you're done? Anyway, it's a start to my 'real' first course, so only up from here.... now to the details and finishing it in Course Designer!

[jpotas]

Well first of all, splining and doing the Lidar is about 10% of the work, maybe a little more. Kind of depends on the course so you have a lot of work ahead of you.

I used the rustic theme, it is the most versatile in my opinion. You can always change it in designer though. But, if you are going to change it do that first. I have had some crazy things happen to me when changing it part way through.

Your splining was fine, you have no worries there.

[Brettster]

Hey jpotas

Thank you again... I pulled it up in Designer, in the Steam version of TGC2019 on my PC. I like it, it's great... but I see what you mean, it's about 10% of the work to design the rest of the course!

A few questions:
1.) The course always loads as 'Brettster', even though I put it in TimberRidgeGC folder? Is there some way to get it to rename? Or do I have to Edit it and re-save? I have had problems before getting that to work, if I go into Edit mode I can see the course, but how do I save it from there?

2.) There are some 'Regenerate' options in the Edit menus, like Regenerate Terrain, Regenerate Entire Course, and one more, what do they do exactly?

3.) The background is mountainous, and not corn fields - as the real thing... How do you load a background/file you can then set as the background, and how do you vary it around the entire course?

4.) The course seems to sit on about an 80' ledge... see pic below... I know you can fix that, and have done so in the past - what is the trick to that, is it a Chad's Tool setting? Just let me know where it is and I'll run it... I'm willing to take the rest of it from here.



Thanks again!
-Brett

[PKR]

#1 Go into the menu (m) and rename the course. done
#2 DO NOT TOUCH. In a lidar situation this will redo the entire course with random hill trees water etc.
#3 you're kind of stuck here, the only option is to change the theme and see what looks best. the game won't let you create or import your own.
#4 That is the lidar mask. There is a 'switch' in chads tool that will bring in the masked area to meet up with the edges of the lidar but at this point what you can do is go into the landscape options and select the red brushes, go over the low areas and raise them where you want and then use the blue brushes when done to smooth the joints if needed. Edit: I'm not sure but I believe you can do this en masse by taking the sharp large square brush and blowing it up to the size of the plot then raising the entire low areas all at once. You're edges are far enough away from the play area and from what I can see it seems fairly flat but that's hard to tell, what I'm trying to say is you might get away with a one and done raise.

[jpotas]

Actually. For #3. Each theme has 3 or 4 backgrounds. In your case try them and see which one is lowest.

And for #4, you can just raise the area outside the ledge a little and then smooth it out. As PKR said, it is plenty far away from the course. I do this to limit the amount of lidar that I am using, this keeps your object meter lower
and allows you to put a ton of detail in without maxing out the course file. You most likely won't see that far in game play. When I design I always think about how things will look during game play. You see way more in designer.

[hintsas]

Was this course ever completed?