Wendel Gascoigne

(Not sure whether this would fit better in content creation)

Imagine that I was about to order an island sim where I could live happily ever after (or until LL decides to go for Armageddon).

So there goes a basic round island on order.

Now what?

Are there helpful guides out there on terraforming the land and on finding good ground textures? Any other guides on getting your island to look its best? Can I apply a sim raw file after receiving the island, ...

Technically, I'm sure all that can be figured out with trial and error.

But if there are helpful guides out there and tips on getting the right ground texture and so on, that would be most useful and helpful.

Has anyone got any pointers?

Thanks in advance.

Wendel

Sobriquet Kryakutnoy

I know many people use applications such as terragen to create RAW terrain maps to upload to their sims rather than sculpt out the terrain by hand.

As far as ground textures, I'm not sure..perhaps some of the other sim-owners will have some good links

Briana Dawson

Hi Wendel.

What kind of happily ever-after are you planning on making for yourself?

Wendel Gascoigne

Hello right back at you!

Good question. Right now, I'm leaning towards recreating the feel of a Caribbean island. Maybe even my wife's old home in Dominica. That includes some green / forest and a beach (although they're mostly black sand beaches over there. So I'm not making it easy on myself ).

EDIT: Oh, and mountainous. Or, less ambitiously, a bit hilly.

Or we might simplify it and go for a more generic tropical island look.

We'll have another SLU resident for a neighbour. So we need to see which one will look best and we'll all like. But we'll certainly experiment in that direction.

Wendel

WarKirby Magojiro

It occurs to me that you shouldn't buy an island if you don;t already know this stuff. I've never had the privilege of owning one, but I've found ample oppoprtunity to learn extensive terraforming skills and basic use of the estate menu

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WarKirby Magojiro

Also, please. No. Really, don't. Anything but that

try wandering around SL a bit more, you;ll get your fill of all the tropical islands you could ever want. There are thousands of them.

It's your island, but I'd really recommend doing something different., Mountainous and hilly would definitely be better, as it's relatively uncommon.

Fade Languish

It's not rocket science. I'm sure Wendel will manage.

Hiro Queso

There are many estate terrain textures in the library, including a black sand. If you are after a tropical rippled sand texture, drop me an IM in-world and I'll drop it on you.

As for the terraforming, etc: There are some pages in the knowledge base which explain the estate tools, but I think it's best to wait and play around with the sim and assoc estate tools once it has arrived. You will figure it out in no time!

Wendel Gascoigne

Thanks for the advice everyone. I know where you're coming from on yet another tropical island WarKirby.

To reassure you a bit, I do own around 19Ksqm of mainland in SL and have done for about 2 years. I've created a forest there and helped terraform the land with the limited tools available to mainland owners. I've had a few rez days too. But I look better than the first day if I say so myself!

So my questions are not born totally out of noobi-ness(? or something) but more out of a desire to:

- Help me wait the 2 weeks it will probably take for the island to arrive
- Get some tips from estate veterans and get to grips with the wonderful new estate management tools I'll get access to.
- to get a few more cool bookmarks in my browser if there do happen to be good guides out there

Many thanks to you 4 for the replies. I'll start by checking the library to see what we have by default and go from there. I might take you up on that texture offer Hiro. Thanks!

Wendel

Briana Dawson

Well let me be the first to say "Welcome to SL!"

I think a tropical island is find, even if it means 'yet another', because many people just LOVE the sun + sand + beach feel, should i even mention the great vegetation you can add?

I hope it does not take 2 weeks. I think it took a total of 10 days for us (including the weekend).

Good luck Wendel!

Beebo Brink

Hey Wendel,

I'd recommend downloading one of the open source stand-alone sims and playing around with island terraforming in prepartion for your LL island arrival.

http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/oth...s-opensim.html

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Brave Republic

I want my own Sim! Sounds cool. Good luck and have fun with the terra forming

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MissKillian Barbosa

And when you throw your Island opening party, I'll bring the chicken wings!

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Wendel Gascoigne

You've totally talked me into an opening party there. Wait... Blue cheese or hot?

Wendel

MissKillian Barbosa

Hey, whichever you like! Hot with a bowl of bleu cheese!!

Or my fave..teriyaki grilled with pineapple and garlic

Miriel Enfield

My personal recommendations for making terrain files are L3DT to make the terrain (Terragen may be better, but I've never used it) and Bailiwick to turn it into a properly formatted RAW.

If nothing else, get Bailiwick. Seriously.

Wildefire Walcott

Make sure you read this thread about ground textures:
http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/tec...hlight=terrain

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Izzy

I'll never forget the day we finally got our island. We stood on it, and saw the vast emptyness in front of us.
We had no idea what to do with it at the time, only that we wanted to do something!.

My other half wanted to set about getting it going, but I wanted to play a little first, so I jumped on the terraforming tools and went a little crazy for half an hour, making large crevaces and huge giant hills. It was fun practicing with all the tools.

Two months in, needless to say I am over being giddy like I was when we first got it, and have made it into a reasonably attractive sim now.. I say reasonably as we are still working hard at it. We just got our first ground texture, which we stumbled across on another sim that was selling them.
It makes the sand look a lot more realistic, and not so default anymore.

The good thing about secondlife, is nothing is permenant. If you change your mind a couple months later you can just rip it all down, start fresh and come up with a completely different feel.

Cattrina Careless

Aint that the truth! My husband changes his mind every couple of months and I'll log in to everything gone and the island flattened - lol. Then in the next week or so he rebuilds something different.

Its fun, but reminds me too much of my mother who used to love re-arranging the house. I'd come home from school some days and not even be in the same bedroom!

And its also the reason my store is at 700m, I got sick of rebuilding it - lol

Joshua Nightshade

I'm guilty of this too. I was redesigning my store so often that I finally hired Lordfly to build it for me. I figured I would not change around something I paid money for. So far it's worked!

Aminom Marvin

I always use hand terraforming. Fun, and much more exact since it is WYSIWYG.

Here's a HUGE tip of how to terraform quickly: the revert technique.

Let's say you want to chisel out some mountains and valleys. First, you flatten out everything and lower it to the minimum height you want for the valleys. Then bake the textures so that is the default for revert. Now raise the land to the maximum height of the top of the peaks.

Now, you can chisel down valleys etc very quickly using the revert tool. Revert moves land many times faster than the normal lower tool, so you can chisel out a general shape in no time!

This also works for islands and pretty much anything.

Then from there you can tweak using normal tools

I also highly recommend using windlight and varying the time of day as you work to see how the terrain looks under different lighting conditions. Windlight lighting makes terrain much more dimensional, and you can get some very attractive orientations by actively terraforming for it.

Aminom Marvin

Here's an example of what I mean. The sort of eroded grooves in the side of the hill really work well with the contrast between lit and shaded faces Windlight provides.

Attached Images

terrain_stuff.jpg (191.0 KB, 60 views)

Wildefire Walcott

That's very pretty.

Khamon

very nice hillside Aminom, well done

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Wendel Gascoigne

Thanks for the tip Amimon. Now I just need to find out what baking the texture means and I'm all set.

I love cliffs and yours look great.

Wendel