Terra forming

I was wondering how you take and get precise corners, perfect angles, and any exact spots made when terraforming? Is there a tool that can be found or bought?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

You can select 16 sq m plots of land and terraform them and make angles, or indeed 16000 sq m plots.

I know that...I'm trying to figure out how people get the land so definate in shapes and angles. I've seen 45 degree angles and there is no way I can figure it out. Any help would be appreciated.

There are script commands
for terraforming (set brush size and brush effect ans brush position) and
to read the ground height (set position) and
to read the normal vector (3d angle) of the ground below a prim and
that return you a direction to walk (from any position) that will not change the height of the ground below you if you walk that direction.

Hmm anyone know if there is a way of telling what height you are working at when raising an lowering, and whether it can be raised or lowered in smaller steps, I can raise land manually to match a prims height but using the land selection tool it seems to be either a higher or lower by half a meter.

.raw files... They let you work at 4 times the resolution that you can readily do in the manual tools. But they can only be used on private sims, and affect the whole sim at once. Can't be used on the mainland.

The manual tools select a 4M x 4M area. The smallest terraforming tool still affects several grid points at once. To do fine work, you need more control.

If you use Photoshop to create a heightmap, and put that into a .raw file, you can upload that to change the terrain of an entire sim, and can include things like angled edges and even smooth curves with relative ease. Using a heightmap in a .raw file, I could carve your signature in the ground as a river...

*However...*

Making it perfect still requires a fine hand with the manual terraforming tools. The grid of control points is still quite coarse, and whether you like it or not, SL does a certain amount of interpolation between grid points, and this sometimes creates very unfortunate artifacts like spikes and bumps and dips.

A sim's heightmap is only a 256 x 256 grid, and with the default 1.0 height multiplier, each change in greyscale value of one will change the height of the land at that point by one meter. (Example: if a pixel in the heightmap is at a value of 22, the land at the corresponding point is 22 Meters high.)

A .raw file also allows you to change that multiplier value. By using a multiplier of 0.50, you reduce the max height to 128 M instead of 256, but you increase the vertical resolution to half a meter per pixel change. (Example: if a pixel in the heightmap is at a value of 45, the land at the corresponding point is 22.5 Meters high.) this allows you to make much smoother hills and transitions.

Thanks Ceera, it's on mainland, and I really rather do it in 3d onsite anyway, as it's only 1/4 sim

For Mainland, and doing it in-world, the best bet is to rough it in, and then start with the smallest tool size in the terraforming tools, and work carefully.

Let's say you wanted to make a plateau with a 4 M tall cliff that was at an angle of 45 degrees, so it could follow a river or a road that already cut across one corner of the parcel. I'll asume that the current baked terrain gives you enough vertical leeway to do that...

First I would select 4M square areas or strips or rectangles made of 4m square blocks, and raise them to make as close as you could to the desired hill shape, leaving indented corners along the road area.

Then use the smallest terraforming tool size, and work the inside corners along the road, as needed to raise that part.

Then use the smoothing tool and a medium or large brush to smooth that into a cliff that follows your road.

It may well take a lot of fiddling with it, but it can be done... Before I learned to make .raw files, I did some pretty good smoothly flowing hillsides using that method. And I still use that technique when working Mainland parcels for clients.

Cool , I'll try that, it's not a real complex job, I have 90% done just need to tidy all the edges

hi,

If you want to edit the terrain files that already saved in raw format.
How do you view and edit it again in photoshop.

What setting do you have to choose and what layer do you haev to select to edit the land height and low and the shape of it.



Tia!

I realize that this thread is several months old but when doing a search it came close to the questions I have. A bought an ocean front plot of land on the mainland a while back and liked the area so much that I ended up buying out my neighbors and now own the whole sim.

The property has high elevations in the north end and slopes down to beach front at the south. I envisioned a high mountainous lake area with a series of rivers and caves that feed down to the lower level beach area. When I started terra forming much to my dismay I learned that my vision and what SL allows are not always the same. After reading up on mainland terra forming limitations, I believe it was stated that elevation could only be changed plus or minus 10 meters form it’s original Linden setting. Is this true and if so is there any way to find out what the original elevations were without reverting the land?

I’ve read about .raw files but it is my understanding they are only available to Estate and Island owners. Are there any additional tools available to the owner of a mainland sim or any advantage at all other than having a lot of space?

Some of the oldest Mainland sims have a +/- 100 M limit. Those are rare. Some are +/- 40 Meters. Most of the Mainland is only +/- 4 meters. World Menu > Region/Estate > Terrain tab is where you can see what the terraform limit is for your sim. The "Terrain Raise Limit" and "Terrain Lower Limit" will be visible there even for those who do not own the land.

There is no way for a Mainland parcel owner to save a copy of the *current* state of the sim, so they can go back to it if they don't like what the default shape is.

The only thing you can do is to select the whole area and in the terraform editing tools, select "Revert Land". That will reset the terrain to the saved Linden terrain for that sim. You can then terraform from there based on the raise and lower limits.

Thanks for the info. I have the standart + or - 4 meters that you mentioned. As much as I hate to start over it looks like I'll have to clear my land and revert back. I'm really courious as to what the original shape was and also that seems to be the only way I'll get a clear picture of what I can actually do in the way of terra forming.

The + and - limit is for a given pont from the origina LL setting? So that if the original is already at say 10 meters elevation I could go from 6 to 14? I think I now know why sometimes when trying level a building site it wouldn't let me. If the original land was at a slope if trying to level a large flat spot it wouldn't be hard to exceed the limitation. What was strange is sometimes when just trying to make a smooth slope I couldn't even do that the way I wanted.

I guess the way to start without being able to use .raw files is to revert back and do some old fashion graph paper elevation. Thanks again for the response.

Yes, the + and - limits are from the last saved setting, which for the Mainland is always the terrain that the Lindens first created there. If you have a +/- 4 M limit, and part of that land had already been raised to its max height, then you could not raise that part any higher, but you could lower it by 8 M (4 M back to the original, then another 4 below that).

On private islands, the feature for doing a terrain revert is far more useful, as the sim owner can save the status of the terrain at any point (called "Baking" the terrain), and can save backups to their hard drive of that terrain profile, or upload new ones. So in private sims, the +/- factor is calculated from the levels where the sim owner last "baked" the sim.