below ground buildings

So the other day I was flying an airship merrily along, smacked a banline and faceplanted.
*shrug* happens all the time.

However, I was stuck in mouselook looking into the grass...

and noticed a rather expansive build completely below ground.

Is it actually possible to exist/live below ground level?

It's possible if it's prim grass and the idea it's below ground is faked

I've seen it Done on a couple of private Sims, but How exactly it is accomplished, i have no idea, i have never been able to reproduce it.

Angel.

it was definitely Linden dirt.

I have a theory it's done with coordinate teleports.

i can put random things underground, but only so far. if i try to get it lower, it pops back up. just like the sky has a limit, so does the ground. and, if you put a hollow box down there, you have to have something to sit you there (like a poseball) or you'll pop back up too.

You have to dig a hole to put it in.

I've seen an underground dungeon that was accessed through a disguised trapdoor in a nice lawn. But, while you can fake covering the building in the hole with grass, or prim dirt or rock, you can't actually cover it with real Linden ground. That grows up from the center of the earth, and you can't cut a slice of it off from its roots and use it as a roof.

I have a half region of caves all underground.
Dig a hole then cover it with a prim ground. Easy cheesy =)

sounds like it would be very interesting to see!,

I wonder if anyone has made a virtual Coober Pedy, like the real thing here in Australia, that I would go and see!

I've done numerous underground builds, basements, caves...

First, you must have the ability to terraform the land enough to make a hole big enough to hold what you want to build. One project I finished for a client had a 70 M x 70 M three-story building above ground, and a 50 M x 50M by 40M deep hole beneath that, filled with caves, dungeons - even a castle Great Hall!

Second, as others stated, you can't roof it with real Terrain. You have to cover the hole with prims.

Third, if you want a side entrance, like a cave entrance at the base of a mountain and caves that go up towards the peak (or down deeper), you have to terraform a notch in the side of the mountain, down to the level of the entry, and cover the area above the notch with prims as well.

Fourth, if you dig below the Linden water plane (20 M elevation in most sims) the area below that will be 'filled with water'. No escaping or displacing that water, but you can use it as an underground lake or hot springs in your cave.

Last, the sides of the pit won't EVER be exactly vertical. There will at the very least be a 1/2 meter outward slope to any pit. So if the bottom of the pit is a 16 M x 16M square, the top of that hole will be more like 20 M x 20M in size. So plan on having the building above it be larger than the basement, or use prim lawns or flower beds around the build to hide the trench around the basement.

Go to Caribbean Escapes, and look behind the waterfall, under the mountain lake. The entrance is at the first bend in the falls, on the right, and you walk through the water there. I built those caves.

I've not found Coober Pedy yet, but I have seen the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Darling Harbour, the Opera House and Surfers Paradise. Search using 'Australia', Isabella - one Aussie to another!

so wait, as long as you have some sort of entry hole, the rest of the build can simply fit underground randomly? or does it ALL have to be hollowed out to fit whatever hollow prim you are building with?

Well no. Your build has to be sitting on the ground and the earth around it is raised up(or your build site is pushed down). Try taking a 10 sq meter hollow box and put half of it underground. If you go into the box the lower half is still filled with dirt.

I went and saw the caves you built. Very nice Ceera. I especially liked how easy it was to move around in their without my camera getting stuck in a wall. It was easy to see which way to go and those caves are big!

Congrats on a great job!

No. The entire usable area has to be in an open pit, trench, or series of connected pits and trenches, which you cover the top of in some way. The prims that you use for lining that pit can extend a little ways into the 'soil', but you can not use anything that is "still below the terrain".

A simple example is a "smuggler's cave" that I am designing right now for a client. The general land surface will be at 26 M (sloping at the edges to the water), and water at 20 M. At the water's edge cave entry, there will be a fairly steep drop-off to the water. The terrain will be lowered 5 M, to form the area that the main cave will be in, and a 5M deep trench will go from the back of the cave area to under the client's mansion. Prims will form the walls and roof of the cave, and the floor in further back areas. On the surface, the trench to the house will partly be covered by a walkway to a building above the cave, and will partly be covered by some prim lawn areas. Over the cave itself, part will be covered by a building, and part will be covered by partial spheres and cylinders, textured to match the surrounding terrain. Add some trailing vines over the cave mouth, and some plantings on top to blend in the terrain prims with the rest of the terrain, and it will look very natural. In the house itself, there will be a trap door in the floor, leading to a stairway at the house end of the trench.

There *are* scripted methods that actually can "offset" your effective position to below ground. At least one combat defense that I read the details on uses that to make your avatar largely "invincible" by shifting your actual position below the ground, while leaving your mouselook and weapon firing position on the surface. But you can not seriously DO anything normal while below the terrain. The game engine just is not set up to allow it.

Thanks! You should have seen it when the original owner had over 40 sets of cuddle and sex pose balls in there! It was quite a romantic get-away spot, getting "more intense" as you went deeper underground. All those twists and turns made for lots of private corners to get intimate with a special friend.

ok, so building caves underground is sort or comparible to living like a mole. LOL

it sounds fun. i'm going to visit all the places you guys have posted, later today after work.

show me more. show me more!

There is a huge cave and dungeon complex on Amarin Island, but you'll need to make an appointment with me or with the land owner to get a tour of it, because it is under the land owner's home and she usually has a security system active, which would TP you home if you tried to get in. The actual lower entrance is in the Amarin Dong sim, behind the waterfall. That tunnel takes you across the sim boundry into Amarin Caverns in the Amarin Island sim. It's roughly ten levels deep, below the courtyard level of the monestary on top of the hill. And it would take over an hour of real time to give you a decent tour of the place.

My home is on a corner beach lot, and if you fly up about 50 meters, and look down into the water (which is on the sim edge) you can see a house deep in the water, however cannot get to it. It bugged the heck outta me, so after looking and looking, I got my camera angle just right, and hit "sit" on a tree that was there. It sat me on the tree. But it was on the other side of the sim. I could actually see the other house and land thru my linden water. Was pretty cool... but freaked me out

That is a "Sim Edge Mirage" - As you found out, what you are actually seeing is stuff on someone eles's land, but incorrectly rendered as being either under water or just pas the sim edge, out into a Void sim. It's a really freaky glitch, when you see it.

My current project is building an underground ruin of an ancient temple. The main part is 20m below my castle. The entrance will be thru a cave and hidden behind a waterfall.

I haven't dug the trench for the cave yet, because I haven't been able to make any cover prims that I think blend well with the surrounding terrain.The terrain is a sloping mountain side going from snow to grass with a slight dusting of snow above the waterfall.

The appearnce of the waterfall is that it issues out of the side of the mountain from an underground stream or river.

I guess it'll remain a work in progress until I solve the terrain problem, along with my other works in progress on the never ending projects list.

The textures that closely match you terrain can be found in your default library too. Nice work Ceerera too in the Carribean

I have a smallish cave complex on Samhain. Can't give the slurl as I'm at work, but it's the middle of the western edge of the sim. Feel free to have a look if you're interested.

It's made by raising up a narrow strip of land around the edge of the plot, dropping in the cave structure built of prims, and then roofing over with more prims. Because it's fairly small it's more of a hollow hill, than actually being below the normal ground level, and is quite good for seeing how the idea works. There's a wide open mouth to the cave at the front, and a hidden exit at the back, concealed with phantom prims. Both entrance/exits are made by leaving a notch in the raised land.

i look foward to seeing that, Wulfric.

It's not the textures that are the problem, it's getting the shapes of prim covers to match as close as possible the surrounding terrain. Just throwing flat or curved prims down the with the textures on it isn't going to work.

But, as it's a work in progress and for my own enjoyment, there are no deadlines or due dates to meet. It's also a learning experience.

The shape is equally important too, but you aren't going to fool anyone if you can't match the grass