Don't understand texture elevation ranges

I have experimented a lot with this, but just can't get it right. I understand that texture elevation ranges are set to specific corners of the sim. But what if I just want to have sand on the lowest level, then grass, then rock 1, then rock 2 over the entire sim? I find it even hard to get only a sand texture on ground level 21 on the entire sim (just above sea level). The grass still pops through. In fact, what I would like to do is have specific height borders for the 4 textures, for example:

10-21: sand
22-24: grass
25-28: rock 1
29-32: rock 2

Can this be done?

Unfortunately the texture elevation settings are not hard limits. They're more like loose guidelines. Textures blend, and poke through in seemingly random places all the time. I've never found a any way to control it with any precision.

The only way to work around it effectively is to cover your land with prims in the areas where you want total control. Otherwise, there will always be some amount of bleed.

Thanks Chosen, but is there any guideline that I can work with? For example... I did a test to try to get ONLY sand on my sim. I made the sim all square and experimented with numbers in the Texture Elevation Ranges tab. But whatever I did, I was always left with a spot of the second texture (grass, see picture). Very unpredictable.

I believe the default numbers are 10.000 low and 60.000 high for all four ranges, but that didn't work at all. I'm trying to make a pretty flat simple island with grass a little bit above the sand on some spots, and later a hill with a more rock texture.



(edit: another url)

http://www.plaatjesupload.nl/bekijk/2008/03/08/1204988698-050.jpg

JSYK the pic doesn't show on the forum (host probably has embedding blocked) directly accessing the url by right clicking and getting properties (or quoting it in basic formatting mode) works though.

Paulo,

These are not hard set ranges. And the most confusing is that the Elevation ranges do not match up with the texture terrain files even though they line up under them. The elevation ranges are specifying the 4 corners of the SIM so that you can have grass more in one corner or the other.

The elevation ranges are Blend Ranges. The 4 sections are the four corners of your SIM. The LOW Setting is the MAXIMUM height of Texture number one... and the HIGH setting is the MINIMUM height of Texture number 4... and the 4 textures BLEND somewhere in the middle of that Range. Example.. if you have 10 for a Low and 40 for a high... the 4 textures will blend within that range... so say Grass will start poking through at somewhere like 8 meters since 10 is the maximum height of sand... the first rock texture will start blending it at around 20 meters.. and the second at around 36 meters.

In your picture you have the Maximum height of the sand at 20 meters for the Southwest and Northwest corners of your SIM.... and in the Southeast and Northeast corners of your sim it is set for 50 meters. So at say 40 meters...on the west half of your SIM, you'll be at the rock textures on the western side of the SIM(with 40 meters as the high)... but just be barely seeing any grass on the eastern side.

It's not anywhere near exact... you just have to play with the numbers until you get the desired effect. On SIMs where they want nothing but sand... the texture terrain files are normally Sand textures for all 4 terrain files. On one of my SIMs, I have sand for the first 2 terrain files.. and then grass for the 3rd. That was in order to have the grass texture blend in at a higher elevation. I tried expanding the range between the Low and the High but it still gave me grass long before I expected it.

I hope this has helped.

Thanks Claari, I'll try that. I only need three textures, so I'll make the first two sand and see what happens. It's pretty confusing though. It's nice to be able to have different textures in different corners, but I would also like to have more absolute height control/order for the four seperate textures overall.