Rosie Barthelmess

Well, it looks like we are buckling down and planning to get an Openspace. I'm really excited about it and I'm sort of trying to get the ball rolling.

I have some questions that I hope you guys can help me with, because I've been inworld for a year but I am a total n00b at all of this stuff.

1) I live on the same land I've had for a year. It's private estate land. How much is a fair upfront L$ price for a 1024 with bonus prims? I have one waterfront 1024, and two other 1024 plots that are tiered with a view of the water, but the sim is sort of terraformed into a pyramid for residential-only. So every plot has a view of the ocean, but only one of them is directly ON the water. Each plot has 300 prims and the tier is L$10/mo USD or payable in lindens, to the estate owner.

2) Terraforming an Openspace -- do I have to find a special terraforming file? Is this something that can be created in Photoshop? Or does it just come with the land underwater and I can raise it up how I want? We have a pretty specific idea of what we'd like to see (there will be two residences on the openspace, each on independent land masses) but I don't know if there's an easy way and a hard way to get that done.

Also? WOOHOO!



Thanks in advance, guys.

__________________


Owner/Designer, Sable Rose Jewelry
Gallinas (near The Shelter): http://slurl.com/secondlife/Gallinas/198/11/59
Filataponic @ Subtle Submission: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Filataponic/209/198/50

Manager & House DJ, Lounge of Dreams

http://skatoolaki.com/sablerose -- Sable Rose Jewelry's blog.
http://rosiebarthelmess.com-- my blog.

Trout Rated: 7.0
"You are evidence that a woman who is comfortable in her own skin has a definite advantage over those who are not."

Persephone Milk

Congratulations on getting an Openspace

Terraforming on an Openspace works exactly the same as on any private sim. You do have the option of importing a RAW file, which can be purchased, created with a tool like Terragen, or manually painted in Photoshop (this is difficult). You can also terraform as you would any land in Second Life. Just use the terrain editing tools to raise and lower land in the traditional way. Now you just have an entire sim of space to play with.

Hope this helps

__________________
.

Markubis

Are there any comparable plots of land that you can go by to figure out a fair price? Thats usually what I do.

Congrats on the Opensim!
I 'm thinking about doing the same, but also looking into Openlife too.

Hypatia Callisto

Openspace, not Opensim ... its just a normal SL sim with a quarter of the prims You can rent them from a lot of land barons

__________________
"To begin with," said the Cat, "a dog's not mad. You grant that?"

"I suppose so," said Alice.

"Well, then," the Cat went on, "you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad."

"I call it purring, not growling," said Alice.

"Call it what you like," said the Cat.

Troy Vogel

You want to first go to Estate tools and DOWNLOAD your RAW file for the sim. This takes a few minutes as it is a big file.

Make a backup of this file. So that you can go back if you mess things up real bad.

You can open and edit this file in Photoshop but like they said above, this is not for the faint of the heart as you have to go over and edit only the red channel blah blah blah details details details....

Start here... this is almost a beginner's guide to island Raw files. It also lists several third party terrain editor applications you can download and use for free:
Nowhere but here...: Second Life Terraforming Tools

Look at this url for full directions for editing in Photoshop (this is technical)
Second Life Inworld Help

Also Look at this Fabulous Page with explanations of everything that's on the Estate Tools window:
Second Life Inworld Help


Finally, when you're done editing, upload the new RAW file directly into the Estate Tools window using the Upload button. REMEMBER, the upload takes 2-5 minutes. Do not quit SL and/or despair until right in front of your eyes your island redraws itself to reflect the new RAW terrain file.

Patience patience patience.

Feel free to experiment and have fun with it.

Remember you want to do this before you start building on your island. So do all the experimentation you need to do... now when it's practical. If you try to do this after your buildings are on the island you may encounter weird problems like things being burried or shifted so that they're not burried etc....

Hope this helps,

__________________

Flickr Stream: Mission Home Store Flickr Photos
Blog:Mission Home Store Blog
PLURK: Follow Me on PLURK

Hypatia Callisto

be aware you wont be able to upload or download raw files unless you're the estate owner. Being on the estate manager list isn't enough. (I know, I'm an estate manager on two estates, and I can't do it)

you'll have to ask the estate owner to do this for you, if you're not the owner.

Rosie Barthelmess

I won't be the owner but I'm in tight with the one who will be.

Okay not that tight. But this tight.

ChatNoir Moonsoo

Is there some documentation on the exact format of the SL RAW file? I read the KB article, but that is too general (and out of date, it seems).

Basically I want to write my own utility that reads in a graphic and writes that out as a RAW file so I don't have to use monster graphics apps like PS (which isn't cheap and way too expensive and complicated for the simple things I want to do; I'm not a graphics designer or artist).

Joshua Nightshade

I think that's the only thing estate managers can't do (upload RAW files) but everything else you can.

I loooove my Openspace. Love love love love love.

Dancien Graves

Yeah I have to agree with Joshua. Now that I have an Openspace sim. I am NEVER going back to having neighbors. I'll go homeless first.

__________________

Joshua Nightshade

Rosie Barthelmess

Well, we're looking forward to it. One land mass for Daman and me, one land mass for Isadora. Live water in the middle.

Woot woot!

Emma Nowhere

Thanks for linking to my blog, Troy, I really should do a follow up to that post. While I did try to make use of other terrain editors, I found that I ultimately had to do a lot of work to finesse their output to work in SL. I pretty much use Photoshop all the time now for terraforming. One technique that yielded really nice results was to draw a terrain like a topographic map in Illustrator, fill in each height level, and then take it into Photoshop and use Gausian blur to smooth it all out. Ultimately, you're going to do a lot of smoothing in-world to get it to look right, no matter what you use. Also, these days, if you're technically inclined, you can run opensim on your computer and use it to quickly preview your work rather than having to do the uploads and downloads of the RAW file to SL, which takes a long time and is a hassle if you're not the Estate Owner.

Troy Vogel

Emma makes a very good point that I totally forgot about. Yes no matter what you do in the RAW file, it has been my experience that you have to select land and use the smooth tool in world to make many areas just right....at least if you want the land to look realistic. If realism is not a concern you will not have much to so with "smooth". :-)

PS. And yes, only the OWNER of the island can change the RAW file. It is one of the very few things other estate managers can not change.

spitz

Has anyone gotten OpenSims to work on an XP or Vista box? I want to try to use it to view terrain before I upload to SL, but OS seems like its for uber geeks!

Also, is there a tutorial for using PS to edit the height map?

Thanks for your page Emma, you are the best resource on the net for info!

Joshua Nightshade

Openspaces are different from OpenSim. Openspaces are "lite sims" that LL offers. OpenSim is an open sourced virtual world similar to SL.

To the latter I have OpenSim running on both XP and Vista and it also runs in Linux and (I believe but am not sure) Mac.

Rosie Barthelmess

Today I will be delivering my funds to my landord-ess-to-be and hope to see our region coming down the pike very soon.

Woot!

Beebo Brink

Yay! Keep us posted and let us know how it works out for you.

__________________

Macphisto Angelus

As Joshua mentioned above there is a difference between Openspace sims and OpenSim.

But to your other comment, though I know my way around computers, etc I am far from uber geek material with them and I have mine up running just fine on my XP machine.

Look here for the incredibly easy to follow way to get going in no time:

OpenSim - Install and Configuration Tutorial « OpenSim Easy User Guide

Also look here for more commentary:

http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/oth...tml#post270613

Porsupah Ree

How well do Openspaces actually perform? I notice the Land Store FAQ makes a point of:

Fair enough, you're not going to get anyone's sympathy trying to run a club on one, but I'd have thought simply living there, perhaps sharing with a few friends, wouldn't stress the sim overly. How much of their assertion is ass-covering, and how much sensible warning?

__________________
"Separated lovers cheat absence by a thousand fancies which have their own reality. They are prevented from seeing one another and they cannot write; nevertheless they find countless mysterious ways of corresponding, by sending each other the song of birds, the scent of flowers, the laughter of children, the light of the sun, the sighing of the wind, and the gleam of the stars - all the beauties of creation." -- Victor Hugo

Kesseret

Well, I've generally been very satisfied with my Openspace sim except that I have problems tping out of it sometimes and also the time dilation will drop to .20 sometimes. In fact, the first week I had it i was sitting on it cleaning my inventory and the time dilation dropped to .20 and stayed there for a long time. It was just me, sitting on the sim. Guess my inventory is laggeh.

In all seriousness the TP issue really busts my chops. Other than that: love love love.

__________________

Dancien Graves

Which is weird, because my OpenSpace has been operating better than the full size sim I was on

Rosie Barthelmess

It's just going to be two residences and lots of open water for us, so I suspect it's going to be fine. I have heard of people running stores on them, having homes on them, building and scripting on them. I think a club would probably be out of the question, but for what's essentially going to be three or four people at one time most of the time (unless we have a party and people actually come, maybe we'll crash it then) I reckon it's going to work out just fine.

Personally, I like the idea of some legitimate privacy, and having things how I want them.