In-Game Plant Creation Tool

I was just wandering around SL when it occured to me. We need to have better tools to make flora. I was looking at the difference between user created content and a linden created content concerning plants in-game. Linden plants are one prim; they sway in the wind; and have round stems. If a user was to created a rounded stem plant it would be more than one prim; and would need a script to have all the prims sway.

So, why not create a new tools in the plant-design tab in the creation tool; just like what was done with flex-prims and lightings. Give it options such as two seperate texture option for tree leaf, flowers, and branch and the tree stem and/or base. Allow, a user to round or square a base; and change the thickness of the foliage above the base of the plant. Allow, for a user to set the amount of wind that passes over a plant. Also, the amount of dynamic light that comes from the plant.

I think a tool like this would be awesome and a great benefit for the game.

Yes! I was just thinking this after looking at a few trees in game.

This is what my suggestion for an "llPlantSystem" call, referenced in a recent thread in this forum, is about.

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SL Forums - Tree Shrub Plant Contest

Maybe allow a way to retexture existing Trees and Ground Cover?

In a recent town hall, Philip mentioned that the SpeedTree addition is coming along nicely. That should make the trees easier on the eyes, but I wonder if they could implement it so that users could design how the trees should bend. I know that as a designer you can set up several basic skeletons for trees which the SpeedTree engine randomly alters slightly with each tree to produce a non-cookiecutter forest. The question is, could we residents be given that power?

I quite like the idea of it being scripted, but I'm unsure how it would work? Would it affect properties of an ordinary object? Or would we have a new type of object available? It's really quite unclear at the moment how the Linden plants and trees are implemented, they appear in inventory as an ordinary object, but it would be a lot of superfluous info to have space for plant parameters in ALL objects, likewise carrying around all object parameters inside a plant.
Unless there's a flag in objects which says "This object is a plant/tree" and tells SL to interpret its information differently? Hmm, if that's the case then it would be fairly easy to make into a script call. However, that may add the complication that EVERY time a call to something like llSetPrimitiveParams is called, you'd have to check if the object is a plant, if it is you ignore it, if not you go ahead with it, because due to the different interpretation of data, it could screw things up otherwise.
Does anyone know with any certainty how plants are done, anything like I said? Otherwise I might post in Linden Answers (or someone else can feel free to do it in my stead since I require sleep), see if we can't get a description.

Just imagine........ ^_^

Thiiiiiiiisssssssssssss........ ^^

The system would be like the particle system, a list of paramaters that could be attached to the object. To minimize the effect it could even be switched on with a one bit flag: any given prim could have either a particle system or a plant system depending on the state of the bit.

So existing prims wouldn't get any more complex.

That would also keep it from causing problems with other calls, like llSetPrimitiveParams.

You need to add at least four textures: trunk/branch, leaves, high-rez standup, low-rez standup.

Oops, forgot. ^^

Yeah, it's just that I'm wondering how plants are done currently? Are they just objects packaged with the game (therefore automatically cached in whatever form they take) and thus don't have any special settings, or are they a different type of object with parameters for the kinds of settings Psya put in that excellent mock-up
I'm going to ask in Linden answers, maybe a Linden can tell us.

A tree is just an index number for the shape, a texture key, and of course its position, scale and rotation.
The client autogenerates it based on that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindenmayer_System
There is, or used to be, a tree editor in the Debug menu. But of course it will only change the current tree on your own screen.

I would really like the option to plant a linden tree in a pot... or on buildable land. Like a sandbox. On one hand.. "oh no, the sandboxes would become impromptu forests!" on the other hand.. it's better than a thousand dayglow penises.

More accurately, the reason I want this, and as frustrated by the "you don't own this land" limitation.. is that prior to the Mauve Sandbox getting a complete overhaul, I was pparticipating in an effort to create an archival replica of one of the floating platforms that had been an icon of the Mauve Sandbox. The plat in question (294m Z) had a planter in it's corner, and a beautiful, giant, linden tree swaying in the wind. My platform was 2/3 scale.. because I always felt the plat was a little too big, but nonetheless, I really wanted to slap a tree in the planter.

Every "buyable" tree I could find was less than ideal, many were no mod or no copy.. (you can imagine how much of an issue adding one of those would be)... but in several cases, linking it to the platform would make the whole thing phantom. (IEEEEEEEEEeeeeee-e--e---e... SPLAT)

Eric Linden has kindly answered the thread I posted in the Linden Answers forums, you can view the thread here, but the basic answer was that the current system isn't all that flexible for allowing user-created content, certainly not with loads of custom textures and such.
So I guess that means in terms of what new system would replace it in order to allow for a plant creation tool, we have full scope since there's no existing system to latch onto really, but it's unlikely to be done soon