Tutorial for multi-region/Estate terraforming ?

I am looking for tutorials that will show me how to do multi-region and Estate texturing/terraforming.

Also, how do you combine regions into an Estate ?

Also, I have seen mentions of using Photoshop to save as a Raw file but my Photoshop v6 doesn't have the save options to save or export into a Raw file. It is missing amount of channels and size of image. It doesn't have an option to create a Raw file.

Lookign for a Raw plugin with Gimp doesn't seam to produce good results also.

I am still waiting for answers from my original thread.

https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417

see Estate FAQ, for example:

"Can I include multiple Regions in my Estate?

Yes. Estate-level tools make it convenient to manage multiple Regions. If you have three Regions (A, B and C) in an Estate called Z, then to get to each of them you'll still need to teleport to those Regions by name. But if you wanted to, you could ban someone from the Z Estate, which will keep them from getting to any of Z's Regions. Also you could set the day/night cycle by Estate, so all your islands have night at the same time."

For terraforming, type that into the search box and see what comes up, hopefully your question will be answered at this link.

As for Photoshop raw files, I assume this option as always been available, maybe you should reload PS if you can't see it. I don't have vers. 6.0 so I can't check to be certain.

Before I upgraded my copy of Photoshop from 7.0 to CS3, I also had to deal with trying to make .raw files without being able to directly open or save that format in Photoshop. The way I got around it was to use Backhoe on a Macintosh to load just the terrain heightmap into a blank .raw file and save it from there. Backhoe is a basic sim terraforming and preview tool (Mac only). There should be similar programs for Windows systems. By using Backhoe to make the .raw file itself, I was able to use Photoshop to make just the heightmap layer that I needed, saving that as a .jpeg file.

In my experience, making a heightmap field for a multi-sim .raw file set is easiest to do as a seperate file anyway. A .raw file is a 256 x 256 pixel image. You can work in a larger multiple of this size, and reduce it to get smoother detailing. I usually created my heightmaps at 512 x 512. But we'll keep it simple here and work at actual size per sim.

So, let's say you wanted to make a 4-sim island, with water on all sides. We will lay them out as a 2 x 2 array. This could be 4 full sims or any combination of full and OpenSpaces sims. Doesn't matter.

Make a Photoshop file that is 256 x 256 pixels, and set guide lines along all 4 edges.

Expand the canvas size from one corner to 512 x 512, so the gridlines now are on two edges and across the centerlines. Then add gridlines on the other two edges.

The purpose of the above steps is to be certain that you lock in those guides at exactly the 256 x 256 divisions.

Paint your heightmap across this 4-sim area, as if it was a single region.

Now, expand the canvas from the center, adding 20 pixels or so around the outer edge. Using the gridlines as a guide, select that ring around the actual island, and fill it with the sea bottom height greyscale value. (Jet black for zero height). This border will ensure you don't get a glitch around the outer edges when you cut your 4 seperate 256 x 256 sections from the contiguous heightmap.

Select each 256 x 256 area, snapping to those guidelines, and save each as a seperate jpeg file.

Now, if you DO have a graphics app that can open and save .raw files, import one of the region heightmap jpeg files for the sim area that you just created, and save that file. Repeat for the other regions.

If you DON'T have the ability to directly work with .RAW files in your graphics app, ue backhoe or some similar app that works for your OS and import the region heightmaps that you created. Save it from that app.

When you load these .raw files into the 4 regions, they should match seamlessly.

Note, the only layers that an imported .raw file pays any attention to are the heightmap, height multiplier, and water level layers. It ignores any changes or missing data in the other ten layers when it imports.

Very odd. I use Photoshop 7.01 and loading/saving RAW files is supported. But perhaps I picked up an import plugin somewhere, I'm always adding every plugin I can get my hands on ^.^

Yeah, as I recall, PS 7 needed a plugin to deal with .raw files correctly, and it doesn't come with that version. PS 7 was able to try to open a .raw file, but wasn't able to seperate the channels so I could deal with them individually. Maybe there was some trick that I didn't quite get, back then. About that time I had to upgrade to CS3 anyway, because my new Mac was running OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and CS3 is the only version of Photoshop that works right under that Mac OS.