Building, Scripting and Project Management in Second Life®
BEST VIEWED AT 1280 x 800 SCREEN RESOLUTION
When you buy your Second Life® island, or part of an island you will need to consider how you want it to look.
A perfectly flat building area is fine for some uses, but if you want hills or mountains, lakes or rivers then you will need to think about the layout.
On a Second Life® sim you can raise and lower the
land using a number of tools provided by Linden Labs, but these are not
always very satisfactory and do not allow adequate landscaping if
realistic scenery is required. Landscaping on the Linden mainland (where
various size plots are traded) can only be varied by about ten metres
and even on private islands there are restrictions. Buying part of a
private island from us is better than choosing mainland as we can help
with landscaping to a far greater degree.
The map of the Scottish Highlands sim above does not give a clear indication of contours ... although the snow is a bit of a giveaway! Below are two screenshots which give a better impression of the real topography you encounter if you visit.
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Our virtual Scottish Highlands, above, comprises hills and glens from one end to the other.
In order to produce this landscape we created one
raw
landscape file for each of the three regions and then uploaded them.
After that there is still extensive tinkering required to get the right
feel and to remove jagged edges. A sample raw file for the Urquhart sim
(the foreground of the above screenshots) is shown here.
The peninsula where Urquhart Castle stands can be seen jutting out into Loch Ness in all three images, but also note rhomboidal shapes. One with sharp edges in a darker green to the bottom right. Another in lighter green near top left. These are the foundation areas for buildings. Without such considerations land would poke up through the floors.
Manipulating landscape comes through experience. Almost anyone with knowledge of image processing programs can achieve similar results, but it takes time and practice.
By using us to create your raw files you are saving time and will obtain a more seamless finish.
There are other aspects to landscaping. Where sims butt onto each other it becomes very important to get the landscaping right and this includes ensuring that water doesn't suddenly change level ... unless of course, you want something unrealistic for a particular purpose. In fact we have used exactly that facility, changing water level between Loch Ness, Loch Oich and Loch Lochy and have working lock gates and swing bridges to lift cruise boats and water taxis between the two levels.
Once you have your landscape organised, the time comes for some building.
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