Ugly Grass

I just recently purchased a lovely piece of land and put a home on it. My only problem is that the grass on th land is just plain ugly. Can I change the texture to something more appealing? If so how is that done. I appreciates any help with this.

Thanks, Meggy

The grass you speak of is a texture applied to the land, and is a region-wide setting. This means that the textures applied affect the entire sim. Only region owners and those they delegate with such powers have the ability to change land textures. In the case of mainland, this is Linden Labs, and they are very unlikely to change the texture. In the case of private estates, you may be able to petition your land owner for a texture change, but will probably only be granted if you are the only resident on that sim.

Be aware that region textures are limited to 256px x 256px images, so *nothing* is going to look very good close-up.

The most common method for working around undesirable land textures within a parcel is to lay down one or more flat prims just slightly above the ground and texture those instead.

Thanks that makes sense. How do I go about getting flats prims? I'm sorry but I am very new to all of this.

Click on the "Build" button at the bottom of your viewer and click somewhere on the ground. This will open the build mode window and rez a 0.5m^3 cube. Using the second tab in the build mode window, you can adjust the position and dimensions of the cube. You could try entering 10.000 in the Size section for both X and Y values, and 0.050 for the Z value. This will give you a large, flat prim you can move around and adjust to fit.

You can then apply textures to your prim. You can find default textures in the Library portion of your inventory, or you can go out and purchase textures to use. You can use the 4th tab in the build mode window to adjust things like texture repeat rates and repeats per face. Be aware that only one texture can be applied per prim face (one texture per surface). You can apply textures within the 4th tab, or you can apply textures by dragging one out of your inventory and dropping it on your prim (be careful doing this - even professionals have accidentally retextured the wrong item by a mis-click).

When covering your parcel with prims, it is important to avoid allowing your prims to reach beyond your parcel boundaries. This is known as encroachment. To avoid this, pull down your View menu at the top, and select "show parcel boundaries".

Ok I can see how to do that. Last question, my labd is not very falt. Will using a flat prim make everything real flat? Thank you so much.

Yes, but you can buy (I'm 99% certain) landscape sculpties that aren't. If you don't mind paying the money for those, you can texture them just as you would a regular prim (although, how well the texture works may depend on the quality of the sculptie.)

Yes, it will make the presentation of your land very flat. Depending on how irregular the surface of your land is, your prim "land" may cause your parcel to be abruptly higher than your adjacent parcels as you have to make your prim(s) thicker to compensate for uneven terrain. If you own the parcel, or if your estate manager has given you terraforming rights, then you can use your land terraforming tools to flatten out your parcel. Be aware that the terraforming tools can behave a bit unpredictably.

I will chweck that out. I might be wearing out the search feature in SL.

The problem with sculpties is that you have to either deal with the appearance of "walking on air" because of the bounding box issue, or the appearance of walking through the ground if you set the thing to phantom. Unfortunately, LL does not provide a very elegant solution to land terraforming and texturing issues. It's kind of a matter of "picking your poison".

Ah, yes, that's true. I hadn't thought of that. Although if you were VERY clever, you could use terraforming to make the ground just underneath match the contour of the sculpty. But that would be hugely involved.

So I guess the answer is just to leave weel enough alone. I kind of had that was going to be the outcome. Thanks for your time.

Meggy, one last thought. If you don't mind tallish grass, you can use phantom prims with that to reasonably effectively hide the ground texture underneath. There are also particle dispersers that will "seed" areas with plant life (again, usually varieties of grass), but I've found they can be a pain to use.

I'll do that. Watch out search button I'm coming after you again. Thanks

It's a bit pricy, but I recently purchased this little widget, and I really liked the effect I ended up with. (I'm planning to do a snowy ground cover for the holidays on my mainland grassy plot. Last year I worked with regular and sculpted prims, but I think this will be a lot more effective. And if people's feet sink in a little bit - hey, no problem! It's snow!)

https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=1328306

It was not complicated to use at all, and the match to the terrain was pretty good. (I accidentally deleted a piece, though, and haven't been able to get the effect back by reusing the sculpt map... may have to ask the creator about it - unless I decide it's quicker and easier to just redo it.)

Often, some of the most striking effects can be achieved by working with the land rather than trying to hide it or make it conform to a pre-conceived idea. If you experiment with the way the land changes when you terraform and work with its natural patterns, you can do amazing things with well-placed rocks, plants, pathways, water features and so on. I've found that challenging your creativity in this way can be one of the most satisfying aspects of building in SL. Have fun!

Flatten the land as much as you can then drop the opropriate sized megaprim on it to cover it all then texture the megaprim as you like, you don't have to make the megaprim phantom either. Just make sure it doesn't extend into neighbours land.

There is even a bunch of terrain textures in the default library that you can match the ground with if you get the right number of repeats.

You can also put things on the land like single prim bunches of flowers or grass (grass that sticks up like real blades do.)

New Trails has some nice ones, and so does Shade Fantasy Outfitters, among other places.

One of the posters suggested that you terraform the land to match the sculptie thats overlaying it. That would be tough indeed... but I can do the opposite: I can make a sculptie that matches your land terraform.

Its often used by people to do exactly what you are talking about: cover the land with a different texture (often used for snow during wintertime or leaves during fall or shadow textures for trees)

It does take some time to do that so its not for free, but you can try and do it yourself if you are eager to learn how to make sculpties.

It might be a usefull and fun project!

Hey Meggy. If your parcel is on mainland you are stuck with its texture, but if it is on an island you could chat with the estate owner about whether they'd be open to changing the ground texture for the elevation you're at. (Each region has 4 different terrain textures, each for a different land height range). It might be good to have a terrain texture that you like in your pocket before starting the discussion - browse through your library's "terrain" folder to look at what LL provides for free.

Terrain textures are also available for purchase throughout SL, but have a look at the library.

(I wouldn't use the word "ugly" when talking to the region owner, though! Maybe start by saying how much you love their sim ...)

Meggy,

You've opened up a huge topic with a seemingly simple question.

A lot of people are telling you a lot of things...and they're all correct. But -- what should you DO? I'm sure you're feeling confused.

Take a deep breath. This is part of the "learning curve" that everyone experiences in SL.

While you can't easily change the grass texture in your front yard, as you can see there are many things you CAN do. Get the sim owner to change the texture. Hide the land with prims, or megaprims (which are just really really big prims, bigger than the 10m dimension of the "standard" prim.) Hide it with sculpty prims. Use a grass rezzer or particle emitter. Cover the land in tall waving grassy plants or wildflowers. We haven't even mentioned abandoning the land entirely and building a house in the sky above it.

Before you spend a lot of money on any of these things, do two things. First, go around to a lot of other builds and see what people have done. If you see something interesting and don't understand how it was accomplished, send the creator or the owner of the parcel an IM and ask them! Second, since you now own land, you should learn the rudiments of building. Search for The Ivory Tower of Primitives and go spend some time with their self paced tutorials.