Shading of 3D textures

[AJ Allen]

Just wondering if there is any way to control which direction the shading occurs on 3D walls, for clubhouse? What I have is 3 walls in very dark shadow, looks horrible. And the one wall with sun on it is the back wall which nobody can see anyway.

I think if there is no way to have the sunlit side facing the course I'm just going to ditch doing the clubhouse and use a few of the APCD 3D buildings.

Cheers, AJ

[Danny D]

Just wondering if there is any way to control which direction the shading occurs on 3D walls, for clubhouse? What I have is 3 walls in very dark shadow, looks horrible. And the one wall with sun on it is the back wall which nobody can see anyway.

I think if there is no way to have the sunlit side facing the course I'm just going to ditch doing the clubhouse and use a few of the APCD 3D buildings.

Cheers, AJ

Hi AJ. This is a major decision that a designer must make at the very beginning when planning a course. The only way to determine where the light falls on a building is by rotating the entire plot to the direction the sun shines. I will usually extrude a big square block on the plot first and sharpen the edges, and look to see what side the sun illuminates. I then determine where my clubhouse will be situated, and rotate the plot so the sun falls on the front of it. Lez makes mention of that in one of his early videos, but most people forget and end up with the dark side in front. Bottom line is, to change the sun direction, the entire plot must be rotated. Would be nice if we had a simple light direction dial, but unfortunately we don't...

Dan

[AJ Allen]

OK, so I think you are saying there is no way to adjust it now that the course is nearly finished, right? If so, I guess I will go with using some of the crappy APCD 3D buildings. Shame, but it is what it is.

Cheers AJ

[Adelade]

Yeah : / no way of rotating any planted stuff along with the mesh, and texture mappings would also get messed up. Shapes would also need refitting separately although that might not be too tricky. Its difficult to get any 3D looking bright or colourful on the dark side of things. The sun is always coming directly from the lefthand side when first opening a course up. I made the mistake of putting my clubhouse area on the left side on my first course and messed around a bunch with trying to make texture colours on the dark side brighter and more colourful, but it didnt really work super well and I ended up rotating and repositioning the buildings best I could. Obviously not a suitable solution for real courses.

[PatAuge]

As a matter of fact there is!! When I designed textures for my structures I had separate textures for the dark side that were specifically brighter than the sunny side. It was trial and error but yes it can be done so you can see the textures much better

Cheers
Pat