I wanted to speak a bit about using green contour maps. I've been updating Colonial for Eric Dorsey, and he introduced me to something I had never seen before. Now that I've had a chance to use them on 2 holes at Colonial, I have determined that using these things is the true way to go if you want near perfection on replicating the actual greens for real courses. Of course they are not free. You'll pay near 50 dollars for the map set, so you would have to have a passion for what you are doing and be willing to pay for them. There are a lot of world class course mappings available.
I'll explain the procedure for those that have any interest in how it works.
Here's green #2 at Colonial. Eric provided 3 of these contour maps for me for Colonial CC. Holes 2, 9 and 11. I turned them into overlays and applied them to the greens. The overlay is the exact shape of the real green and it has contour lines on it. Each line is 1 inch higher or lower than the next. The arrows point downhill in the direction a ball would roll.
I went to Google Earth and took measurements of the green from front-to-back and side-to-side. I then copied down the highest altitude point I could find on the green. You can see that it's the large bare area all the way near the top center. Everything from that spot runs downhill. After I had the overlay properly sized, I went around the entire green and moved the verts to the outer border of the overlay. When finished, I had a perfectly shaped and sized green.
Next I starting popping verts into the contour lines all over the entire green until all contour lines were covered.
Next I selected all verts on the contour line at that highest spot in top center and hit "F" to flatten them all to the same altitude. Then I raised them up or down until I had them set at the altitude copied from GE. That is my starting point. From that point on I would select all of the verts on the contour line next to it, flatten them and then raise or lower the whole line to 1 inch higher or lower than the last one. (depending on slope) I did that 1 line at a time, and when finished had a perfectly shaped and contoured green, pretty much identical to the real green. There really is no other way to get them any closer than by using this process.
These 3 pictures are
1: The green overlay after I sized it and shaped it. Ready to start popping in the verts.
- one.jpg (204.51 KiB) Viewed 4296 times
2: The completed green with the texture showing
- two.jpg (483.25 KiB) Viewed 4296 times
3: The completed green with the textures turned off
- three.jpg (416.41 KiB) Viewed 4296 times
The outer path surrounding the overlay is the outer seam blend for the fringe. The only thing left now is to add the fringe and inner seam blend and apply the original green texture.
A little time consuming, but knowing you can't make them any more perfect makes it well worth the effort. If I were to do another course, I most certainly would spring for the 50 bucks and purchase the green contour maps.
Cheers,
Dan
