Musselroe Bay

When golf course architects OCM told us their new project was little more than an hour drive from Barnbougle Dunes in the North East of Tasmania, we had a feeling it would be a good one, and we weren’t disappointed.

However, it wasn’t until we saw the drone footage (captured by AirSwing Media) that we realised just how special the proposed course in Musselroe Bay could be.

The brief was to create some animation to showcase a single hole of OCM’s proposed design of the course, which was still in the concept stage.

They wanted the course to appear as if it has been carved out of the landscape, with the heathland creeping onto the fairways, so it looked natural and irregular. Not too dissimilar to the character of Royal County Down where some areas of rough are tightly mown and other areas are left longer. If you are familiar with the process of creating a 3d model then you will know this is easier said than done. It is so much easier to create a perfect 2m cut of mown rough bordering the fairway. Lucky we like a challenge!

It was also important to create the diversity of plant life, in particular the purple flowering heather, which frames the bunkers. For this we were given Swinley Forest as a reference. Again, the plant life needed to look as if it had been growing naturally on the site for many years, which provided another test of our 3d modelling abilities.

We decided the best way to showcase the hole would be to create an animation with a mix of eye level and aerial perspectives. This allowed us to always keep the focus on the hole, but also capture the character of the course and landscape beyond.