Terrain textures/editing ^_^

Im not sure where this post should go so mod feel free to move into the respective forum.


My question is- I have seen several SIMs now where they have half snow and half grass. Or half sand, and half grass. The thing that boggles me is that the island is all the same height! (Just flat ground probably all 22m in height and plots for rent)..... And if you know anything about editing terrain; this is normally pretty impossible right?

How is this being done?

Also on the sim I rent at the owner has his whole sim in grass, and then the edge on ONE SIDE of the sim is SAND- again, pretty much the same height as the rest of the land! and absolutely no grass mixed in


Is this some kind of "hack", for lack of better wording, theyre doing?

Isnt it you can only change the terrain texture by using the height limits, and even then the different textures seem to mix and blend together.

I would love to know how they are doing this as it would be great to have sand on just the edges of my sim rather than mixed into places I only wanted grass......Does anyone know?

Maybe the heights do differ but only by one or two centimeters (less than an inch)?

Maybe but i dont see how that would work, it makes no sense how theyre only getting edges/halves to change without ANY mixing occuring.

Prim land?

You didn't specify whether is private island sims or mainland but part of the island sim controls let you determine where the textures start and end according to height and this can be set independently on each quarter of the island (NE, NW, SE, SW). So you can say texture A starts at 20m on the SW but 0m on the NE with the highest texture ENDING at 20m instead.

Is that maybe what you're seeing?

Yumi- no


Max- Private Island. Hmm yes that could be it, I thought you could only change it according to height and the whole island took on the change, is this a new feature or has it always been like that? How can I read more about how to do this?

When I got my first island I wanted sand on the edge and a concierge linden told me Impossible and i tried it a few times and could never get it to work- but seeing these "half half" sims I knew now there must be a way

Can you give an example of the sim you were looking at that had this effect? I think the settings for the corners might be it but I'd have to look at it to be sure.

Well im not sure which sims i saw the half half on but the other place i was referring to about the place i rent at its beach which is like this is the sim 'ascella'. ull notice the whole sim is grass but the beach strip and theres not much land difference

I had someone else who read the thread msg and tell me it was the corner thing and i think it is im just not sure how to work it

Where I live there's only a gentle slope down to the water and the grass becomes sand. I could also be imagining it but I'm sure on some areas of grass where I've spent a lot of time playing with the terrain, it's gone 'muddy', almost as if I've been too enthusiastic with the gardening So I think we must be just on the border beteween 'high enough to be be grass' and 'low enough to be sand/dirt'. We can't edit the terrain textures ourselves any way other than by accident, and I'm pretty sure the same goes for anyone outside a private island.

I am and estate manager for several private islands.

The sim owner or their estate manager can control the placement of 4 texture choices in 4 rough altitude bands. Those choices for altitude can be specified at each corner of the sim. SO to make a sim that has snow on one side and grass on the other at the same altitude, arrange the terrain textures so snow appears above grass, and on one side of the sim set the altitude bands so the snow layer starts higher than on the other side.

The result will be that you'll shift fron Snow to Grass as you go across the sim, at the same altitude.

I played around with this lastnight and silly me I never noticed you could do it this way, I wonder why that Linden did not explain this to me months ago.

Possibly that particular Linden had never played with Estate Management tools? The Live Help people are volunteers. If they don't happen to either own a sim or have estate manager rights for a friend who owns a sim, they wouldn't have first-hand experience of how to do this trick.

Not sure where you got Live Help from, I didnt go to Live help, a concierge linden came and met me inworld.


Anyway it doesnt matter, just thought it weird.