Estate and Groundcover

I understand how an estate (sim) owner can set the textures for the land. I own a small lot on an estate and wish to add textures to just my land. Is this possible? I did see it referred to in an old post.

A friend suggested I use what they called groundcover on my lot. I understand the concept of adding a texture to a prim and laying it on the land. How would I get a prim to conform to the shape of the land?

In theory, you could make a custom megaprim sculpty to match the terrain contour, elevate it slightly above ground, and texture that, although there are all sorts of "gotchas" with that, not least of which is the resolution of the surface texture you could get to map smoothly over the prim.

Depending how dramatically you want to alter the texture, you might be satisfied with particle overlays. Botanical (among others, I'm sure) have things like cattails and assorted grasses and flowers that can appear above the surface. Particles, however, have their own weirdness.

(Unfortunately I don't know enough about Estate terrain textures to say if part of an island can use a different terrain texture palette than the rest. My hunch is that it can't, but that's just because I don't remember seeing it anywhere before.)

[Edit: The Knowledge Base seems to confirm that an Estate sim has just one set of four ground textures that apply according to terrain elevation. On the off-chance that this link works for anyone else, I found it at https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=4220.]

Unfortunately, the texture I want is a flat grassy cover that would have to lay accurately on the land.

If you are in a far corner of the region there *are* some tricks. It is possible to leave the rset of the region mostly the same and get you the ground texture you want. It is not easy though.

Estate ground textures are controled/adjusted with values for each corner of the region. Not specific parcels. There are 4 textures for different elevations. By fiddling with the elevations each texture is displayed at, in each corner of the region, one can do some tricky things.

Mostly people use roughly the same elevation values for each corner. This gets the sand near the water, grass above that, etc.

But if your estate owner uses extremely different values in *your* corner, it could be possible to get the grass texture to display on your parcel.

It is not easy. Make sure your owner notes the origional elevation numbers before fiddling. So it can be put back if needed.

Feel free to IM me, I can show you a couple of examples. =)

Thank you Alisha, I understand the concept.

Just musing now: If I just flatten the land to start. Then I create a prim and shape it as in landscaping land (which I have no idea if I can do). I could just lay the shaped prim on the land and add the texture I want. Something to try.

I know I'd like t'know!