That's a nice idea! And as for being a golf geek, if you live in Florida your other choice seems to be NASCAR, so...
September/October 2014 Lite Challenge: Cartography Lakes Golf Club's Fantastic Finish
The first time I saw the lake challenge, I assumed immediately that I would enter and create a D&D map of an underground lake for an adventure I just happen to be working on. But the more I thought about it, the more I was swayed by a second idea: to make a golf course map, similar to an idea I have posted here before.
Specifically, I'm inspired by the story of the creation of TPC Sawgrass, home of the Players Championship, which features the famous hole 17 island green. The architect, Pete Dye, and the PGA commissioner, were hashing out ideas for a course over lunch, and Pete Dye sketched this not-particularly-inspiring design on a placemat at the restaurant:
Of course, that eventually turned into this:
So my premise will be this. I've made a sketch on paper (which actually looks a whole lot better than Dye's... though I'm sure the eventual product will be a whole lot worse!) in which I've roughed out hole 16, 17, and 18 of the fictional Cartography Lakes Golf Club. (In case you didn't know it was fictional I thought I'd point it out.) Unlike Sawgrass, there aren't any island greens, but the lake features prominently in the strategy for each hole, and there will be one of each length (par 3, 4, 5).
Hopefully I get points for originality, even if I'm a little odd for being such a big golf geek.
That's a nice idea! And as for being a golf geek, if you live in Florida your other choice seems to be NASCAR, so...
Ha ha! The lesser of 2 evils, eh Diamond?
Here's the sketch, which I'll label as the first WIP.
### Latest WIP ###
And here's a very early attempt to copy my sketch into Photoshop. Hopefully I'm not making a tactical error by doing the lake first, but that is in the spirit of this particular contest.
### Latest WIP ###
Mmm, nice texture. There is that brush edge line/break towards the top of the lake though; I always waste loads of time fixing those
Actually, thank you for pointing that out. After posting this I caught and fixed the one in the western side of the lake, but hadn't seen the one on the north.Originally Posted by Corilliant
Mmm, nice texture. There is that brush edge line/break towards the top of the lake though; I always waste loads of time fixing those
Probably one more update for today. I think I've fixed some of the clunkiness in the water. I'm now playing around with the base color of the land which will be the rough for the course. I've also added some elevations, though right now a lot of that is random and I'll be going back in and accentuating some hills and flattening the fairway areas.
At some point I'm going to need bridges... anyone have any tips on that? I'm thinking just importing some bridge overviews from elsewhere; I don't trust my artistic skills to make them from scratch. (Three bridges indicated on the initial sketch.)
### Latest WIP ###
Here's the latest iteration. I'm really happy with the way the fairways and greens came out. When I started I was hoping I'd find a texture and a blend mode that would create a nice "mowed grass" effect, and I think it came out pretty well. I also think I found good blending modes and textures for my bunkers. I will next tackle cart paths, I think - though I'm a little nervous about that. After that I'll add trees and bushes, and other planned niceties.
### Latest WIP ###
Oh - one minor complaint about my mowing effect, and that's that the textures are always oriented in the same direction (north/south). Is there any way to rotate these (without designing new textures)? Both the green and fairway mowing are pattern overlay layer styles in Photoshop CS6. There is a control to alter the scale of the texture, but not, so far as I can tell, its orientation with regards to the edges of the page. Not a big deal, but if there's a way to rotate this, I'd like to learn it.
I've added bridges, cart paths, some dirt paths, and some trees, bushes, and flowers. After finishing up the vegetation, I'm going to experiment with adding some yardage ranges to indicate the driving zone for each hole. I may also add markers indicating 100, 150, 200, and 250 yards from the green, where appropriate. I'd like to add a clubhouse, but like with the bridges I'll probably just drop in a pre-made element if I can find a good one. Of course, I'll need some kind of text description as well. I may also need to play with the color of the base rough... it's a bit saturated although frankly a lot of courses look like that. I may add a texture to that as well or other variation.
### Latest WIP ###
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