Linden Water

is it re-creatable?... I want to make a lake on a mountain but have the same water characteristics as Linden Water...


any ideas?

No

You can use false/scripted water, that's about it.

You can have the default water texture...just a common blue water with no reflections or movement, so, you can find a better texture instead of it.

In a word, no.

Linden water is a feature of the world, as opposed to being an object. Our world is made of:
"The world": land, water, clouds, sun/moon.
Avatars (including their basic mesh, clothing layers, and attachment points)
Objects

Linden water is different from prim water. For example, it doesn't cost prims. Animations to swim in it are different from animations to swim in prim water. And prim water is not acted on by WindLight, so it comes off looking pretty bad in comparison to Linden water.

HOWEVER: It's possible to make a lovely lake with prim water. You can script it so that it ripples prettily, and so that it makes a splash and ripples around your avatar.

This is something that should be requested as a feature if it hasn't already. Linden water should be an option in the building tools or even the terrain tools.

the problem is that all linden water has to be at the same level, with exceptions on islands, but they ask and recommend that you keep Linden water at 20 meters.

the best you can hope for is some brilliant scripter that can replicate a windlight water effect

thanks

Even island water has to be the same level across the island. If I recall correctly anyway, you can't have a dip in water level anywhere within the SIM, and it has to all be a specific, pre-determined level. I can't remember if there is a limit to that within the scope of normal sim design, beyond the same limits left to land.

Which leads me to the question, if I build a hole in the land, can I turn the linden water off and have a dry hole?.

No. Once you hit the water table, you will see water.

Each sim (mainland or island) has a fixed value at which it renders the Linden water. That value is between 0 and 255, and it represents how many meters in height the water is rendered. The figure cannot vary within the region but different regions can have different water levels. It's not inconceivable that you could have a lake high up in the mountains using linden water, even on mainland. However, it could only be done by the estate managers, i.e. Lindens, if it were mainland.

For private islands, they suggest you do not change the water level from the 20m because all the 'void' around the sim is rendered with imaginary water at 20m, and you would have an obvious gap or step if your sim had a different water level.

-Atashi

If you're high enough above the water level, yeah.. but if you get to the water level no, you can't turn off the water at all, though you might be able to set your own environment settings to make it clear enough to hardly notice...

There is a request in the works to make some method that will allow prim water to look like Linden water does under Windlight.

We raised the point at a Windlight meeting that the new Windlight water effects make all the lakes and rivers that feed into the ocean look like crap in comparison, and the Linden staffers said that something to allow prim water to look the same under Windlight as Linden water was in fact in development. It wan't a high priority yet, however. They wanted to get Windlight fully operational first.

Actually what would be really cool would be if there was a new prim material for 'water'. Like where you can set it to stone, metal, wood, glass, et cetera. Maybe that would be enough to let the windlight viewer know to render the prims the way it renders water.

What would be super cool would be if they could make 'water prims' which could somehow be made to interact with vehicles - so boats could float in it as if it were linden water.

-Atashi

I've made a boat that sails perfectly well on "prim-swim" water, in a lake at 60M elevation. All I did was to adjust the height offset in the vehicle script, so the boat "floats" 40 M above the Linden water plane. Made the boat useful only in a prim lake at that specific altitude, but it worked fine.

To expand on previous answers: if you fill the hole with a invisiprim, it will cloak the water texture and you'll see dry all the way down. However, if the prim's phantom and people drop down, you'll get the typical texture-hiding effects on their avatar, and they'll see/hear the usual effects of being underwater.

(Hmm, does this work with Windlight/RC as well? I'll have to check later.)

That is great news! Definitly a needed feature.

VWR-3260 on the JIRA. Go vote for it.