Texture Tutorial

Required Software: Adobe Photoshop, Kai's Power Tools KPT6, Eye Candy 4000

The topic of custom textures has always been popular and in past golf titles it has been much easier to create your own quality sets. However, TW2004 utilizes a complex lighting system that can often make it very difficult to get the desired results a designer is looking for. As an example, you may have the graphics skills to create beautiful looking grass textures in Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, which may look great in PGA2000 or Links 2003 but the rendering results in TW2004 can be quite disappointing to say the least. I have spent a considerable amount of time of late investigating the methods used by graphics artists, mod makers and creators of other game titles, which use similar rendering engines, to find out how they were able to create such outstanding looking textures. Fortunately my persistent effort has paid off IMHO. I have been putting together this detailed tutorial with accompanying screenshots to hopefully help the entire designer community enhance the custom look of their courses. Please follow the tutorial step by step and feel free to contact us with any questions or suggestions that you may have.

1) Create a new file with the parameters below.

2) Choose a suitable base green color for your texture by clicking the foreground square in your toolbar, which will bring up the color picker window. You can use the RGB values below as a starting point.

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3) Next select edit, fill. Use the default settings which should be foreground color, mode>normal and opacity>100% to instantly apply your choice of color to the entire image.

4) Now we will add the 1st filter effect by choosing filter, Eye Candy 4000, HSB Noise. This effect will create the subtle undertone variations in your texture. Use the settings below for this tutorial but understand that Lump Width/Height can be adjusted to increase/decrease the size of patchy areas in your texture up to 100 pixels for best results (Photoshop defaults to inches but I prefer pixels. You can change this setting thru Edit, Preferences, Units & Rulers by changing the Rulers to Pixels). Make sure the Seamless Tile option is checked to ensure the final texture is perfectly seamless, a great option IMO. The filter also has 999 random seeds or patterns that are auto generated by clicking on the Random Seed button or manually entering the numeric value. This is an excellent feature, which combined with the lump settings, allows for a virtually unlimited variety of seamless patterns that can be created in a matter of seconds. Sweet!!

5) It's time to add a little grain to your image so select filter, noise and then add noise. I used the settings below for the purpose of this tutorial but you may want to adjust the noise level depending upon your preference. Note that this texture technique will not be like the traditional method of increasing noise for each texture type. Instead, the additional filters will help you create thicker looking grass surfaces.

6) We will now create the granular scale of the texture via image, adjustments, and levels. Select options and then ok to use the default levels. YES, the texture looks pretty damn hairy right now; downright ugly you're probably thinking, lol! That will change very soon.

7) Ok, time to put some color back into your image. Go to image, adjustments and finally variations. This option will be very familiar to Micrografx Picture Publisher users. You will now create your desired texture color range by clicking on the different color tone adjustments surround below your "current pick" in succession, as displayed in the following image, until you have a satisfactory look. For the tutorial I used the following selections in order: more green, more green, more yellow, darker, more blue, more yellow, darker. I used the default settings but you can adjust the slider for impact of effect and type. You can click back on the top left original texture during this task at anytime if you want to start over from the beginning. **This is NOT the final color of your texture but more like the general color range you are seeking and an easy way to visually get to the look you want. We will fine-tune the colors at the end of the tutorial. Move on soldier…

8) All right, you made it to the real beauty of this texture tutorial, the KPT6 Equalizer~! The image below displays the equalizer slider setting I used for the starting green texture (-31, -62, -82, -81, -83, 0, 0, 0, +24). This setting tightens up the pixel displacement tremendously yet still allows the HSB noise undertones to faintly come through. Experiment with the slider settings to get a feel for their use. The middle range bands allow you to accentuate tuft like grass, while the higher frequencies (lower number) have a dramatic effect on the image pixels.

9) At this point your texture should have exactly the right grain look you want but perhaps not quite the perfect coloring or shade. Use Photoshop's hue/saturation and the brightness/contrast tools under the image, adjustments menu for the final color adjustments to your texture. These are the values I used. *Take note of your settings, write 'em down, as you will be modifying these for each additional cut created.

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10) Ok, you now have a very nice looking green texture so via file, save as let's save your image as a 24-bit .tga file. To make it easier to navigate to your custom textures in the Course Architect I like to name my image files exactly as they will be named when you compile them in the Library Creator. EX: Rat-Green.tga, Rat-Fairway.tga, etc. This way your set will be grouped together in the texture list. We can add mow lines to this texture and others, which I will explain later in the tutorial, after completing the entire set in the next steps. Onward~

11) There's nothing more distracting than a custom texture set of mismatching color tones. You know, where the green is a nice bluegrass color, the fringe is neon green, rough is evergreen and so on. The following chart can be used as a guideline to ensure your set looks like it was freshly cut by your local country club's greens keeper crew. Leave your newly saved green texture open and via the edit menu step backwards 3 times until you are back to your image as it looked before applying the KPT6 Equalizer filter. Load up the Equalizer filter and adjust your slider settings to match the fringe settings below which will add a bit more depth to the texture. Then apply the hue/saturation (HSL) and brightness/contrast (BC) settings listed in the table below to complete your new fringe texture. *Now save as Rat-Fringe.tga (replace Rat with the name of your library). You'll notice I listed values for the remaining textures needed for a full course set. Please note that these values should be used as a guideline only and you should modify the equalizer settings to get the look you want. Of course some designers like to implement several levels of rough while others will only have a couple rough textures plus a tee, green, fringe and fairway. You will need to adjust your Equalizer settings based on your specific texture needs. Fortunately KPT6 remembers the last values you used for each filter so it is much easier to apply each incremental adjustment. Basically all you are doing is adding grain to your original texture and then adjusting the brightness levels with each longer cut of grass. Once again, experiment with this great filter and you can produce a great variety of textures.

Below are the adjustment settings I used for this texture set. The 1st row represents the sequence for all textures except the Dry Rough texture which was based on the 2nd row.

12) You probably noticed by now that there are a few more columns in the 1st table above that I haven't referenced yet. The single B column refers to the Brightness settings I used to add mowlines to secondary Green, Fairway and Tee textures. This is easily done by using the selection tool in Photoshop. Open up your green texture, then click on the dotted square icon in your vertical toolbar (top left). You will see several options in the 2nd vertical toolbar at the top of your screen. In the Style drop down menu select Fixed Size. Then go to View in the top toolbar and make sure Snap is checked. To create a nice crosscut green change your Width (2nd toolbar at top) to 256 px and Height to 1024 px. Now click on your texture and you'll see a dotted selection which is exactly 256x1024. Next click in the middle of this dotted rectangle and drag it toward the top left corner of your texture. It will auto-snap into place when you get near the top left corner. Release and then adjust the brightness of this selected area to -3 (Image, Adjustments, Brightness/Contrast). Under View make sure Rulers is checked and then move your mouse and use the dotted line in the ruler (it will scroll left/right based on your mouse movement) to select the 2nd small measurement mark after 500. Your new selection will automatically be positioned at 256 pixels from your previous selection, perfect! Now once again adjust the brightness of this newly selected area to -3. Now change the selection Width to 1024 and the Height to 256. Do the same exact steps to add your horizontal brightness adjustments to the texture. Once you are done save the texture as Rat-GreenX to represent your crosscut green texture. You can then do the same to your tee texture. For fairways you'll want to use 512x1024/1024x512 brightness adjustments for your mowlines. You can also do a vertical or horizontal only mowline if desired.

13) Last but not least we have come to the grass blade section of this tutorial. The lastest version of the Library Creator lets you assign 3D grass blades to your custom textures just like the ones seen in some of the stock rough and weedrough textures. For green colored blades you want to create a blade texture that is close to the darkest color in your grass texture. To do this in Photoshop, open up your grass texture (I only use 3D grass for my 1st Cut, Rough and Dry Rough textures) and then under the Filter menu choose Gaussian Blur from the Blur options. Now adjust the slider to 30 (the last two columns in the large table above denote GB Gaussian Blur and B Brightness settings used for a blade texture). Next adjust the Brightness to -30 and finally save the texture as EX: Rat-Rough Blade.tga. The only blade texture I don't darken is the Dry Rough but this is all subjective to the look you want. Now that you have all your terrain and blade textures created go ahead and open the LC and create a new library. I have tested many different combinations in the LC and have found the following to provide the best overall look to performance ratio. First add all your terrain textures and then set their correct coefficients by double clicking on each one which will display the edit menu. **VERY IMPORTANT - A common mistake found on some courses where the designer has used custom textures is that some of the textures have not been made dropable. You should make every texture dropable with the exception of your green texture. This will prevent a player from having to replay a shot from their last position instead of being able to drop if they have hit a shot into a hazard. Now add your blade textures to the Grass Effect Textures tab and take note of the position for each one represented by a red number in the thumbnail. Next go back to your rough terrain texture and click on the Grass Props button in the edit menu. The values will be 0 for all properties. I use the Tall Weeds Template for my Rough/Dry Rough textures and the Standard Rough Template for my 1st Cut texture first (then I edit the settings as noted in the table below). At the top right of the grass props window you need to make sure you select the corresponding grass blade texture by it's position as mentioned earlier. Now complete the properties using the following values. Save your library 1st as a temporary file and then choose Create Library from the file menu. Your new texture set is now ready for use in the Course Architect.

I hope this tutorial has been helpful and I look forward to seeing some sweet new texture sets in the near future. Good luck and most of all have fun designing!!

~Desert Rat