Links Corner Forum

The long grass planting at Royal Lytham looks fantastic, but I've got to ask: isn't there some way, some shortcut, for planting long grass rather than doing it one strand (or 5) at a time? I dread doing that much planting as much as I dread doing cart paths! Ideas?
Thanks,
Pete

Yea its the "Forest Planting" tool. Lez covers it somewhere in the 2D planting video/s but I can briefly describe how I tend to do it (not that I planted Royal Lytham by the way).

First should be noted that the Forest Planting tool only seems to work in an APCD that was properly installed (as opposed to the directory simply being copy-pasted) UNLESS you use the APCD without running as administrator while doing the forest planting (thank you MrMoggie for letting me know).

How it works is you make a Shape around the area you want planted, then select the Forest Planting tool, select the shape (or shapes!) then forest plant one object at a time with your desired settings. Particularly with grasses I often use the delete command afterwards (deleting a set % of the object within the shape/s to get a very particular density. I remember Lez mentioned doing so can lead to APCD instability, in my experience I've had some crashes when doing a lot of it but not too bad if saving enough, and I value the method too highly to not use it.) Another good tip is testing out a sort of formula of objects and densities on a test plot and seeing how it ends up looking before actually doing it on your course, to improve loading times and decrease risk of crashes or worse.

I agree with using a test plot to get the density and look right with your textures

A test plot for sure. I'll find Lez's video and watch it. I'm guessing that there are some short grass plantings in there to form a base for the longer strands coming out. I can't quite see them but that's the way those long grass areas seem to be when watching Scottish links courses. We have long grass areas here in the states without those base grasses but they don't look as thick and menacing. So do you add them? Thanks.

Pete

Pete

I tend to use 2 or 3 different grasses, depending on the look I want to achieve. I often use 1 or 2 wide and short grasses, then a more square shaped taller wispy one to complement it. It's all down to what you want to achieve. On most of the courses I have built, I have always planted the heavy or deep rough, but just for the look and not to penalise by setting the density to low and dampening to less.