Texturing terain

Hi, Can anyone help me out? I need to apply textures to the terain on my island. I can't find any tools within the SL options to do this. I basically just want all grass. Thanks

Go into Region / Estate in the World menu. There should be a tab in there called Terrain which will allow you to alter your textures.

Going off memory with the exact names because I'm not in world right now

Additionally, check the covenants, if any, on your land. Many beach sim owners prohibit retexturing your land to a different look (changing to all grass, for example). If not mentioned in the covenant, my opinion is it is better to ask forgiveness (if caught) rather than permission.

The particular sim I live on prohibits retexturing, or even using textured flat prims to cover your property to give it a different environmental look, so I obey their wishes. The previous one I lived on had no such restrictions and I covered the entire plot for a while with flat prims textured with green grass. Never a negative word to me about it.

Oops, I assumed he actually owned the estate, when he said "his island", but I see now that that might just be a terraformed pancake style thing.

As far as I'm aware, only the Estate Owner and Estate Managers can retexture the sim, and even then it applies to the entire sim, not once specific parcel.

Only a private island Sim owner and/or their Estate Manager(s) can alter terrain textures. It's done on the Estates controls, and it is a sim-wide change. You can specify 4 textures for 4 'altitude bands', and can specify roughly the transition altitude between the lowest band and the one above that, and between the highest band and the one below that. These altitude values can be adjusted at each corner of the sim, but the 4 texture choices affect the whole sim.

For a simple setting with sand below water level and grass on all land, use a "Wet Sand" texture for the lowest level, use a "Grass" texture for all the other three, and set the low limit at 18M for all 4 corners of the sim. The grass on the shores will extend down about 2 M below the water line, and you'll have sand below that.

Basic terrain textures can be found in the Library section of your inventory. Plenty if variations of grass and sand to choose from. Select the ones that do not have "Base" in their names. Those are the higher-rez versions, while the matching 'Base' version is a lower-rez copy.

If the sim is Mainland or you don't own or manage the whole sim, you can't change terrain textures. There is no parcel-level terrain texturing.

But of course you still may be able to get the effect you want by covering the relevant terrain with textured prims. (Sculpted prims being the most flexible choice.)

Yes, at the parcel level the only choice is to cover the ground with terrain-colored prims.

Sculpted prims still have issues with their collision box not matching the sculpted surface, so they are not much use for a surface that you plan to be able to walk on.

Ceera, why is this relevent for texturing a terrain? I would just have them follow the existing terrain and set them to phantom.

If you're good enough at making Sculpties to make them match existing real terrain, I'd happily hire you as a subcontractor for my sim development business. I doubt that most people in SL could accomplish even a rough match between the visual surface of a sculpty and a piece if existing terrain. I know I can't.

Ceera, when do i show up for my interview?

I see your point. It could certainly be done programatically, if there were sufficient demand for it.

DanielFox, Omei,

Quite seriously, if either of you can make sculptys that closely match existing terrain surfaces, please do contact me via IM in-world. I'll give you a test area to try it on, and if it works I'll pay you for making that and several more. I would like to see what can be done, and I have been much too busy building and texturing lately to take time out to play with making sculptys.

As a sim builder I frequently have times where I would like to either coat a terrain section with a different texture, or replace a terrain surface with a shaped prim, so I can excavate a trench or notch under it. In the latter case it wouldn't necessarily need to be a surface one could walk on, as it often would be a steep slope above a cave mouth, or something similar.

Drop me a line. Thanks.

As far as I know sculpties use a sphere for the physical shape but you make your shape fit into a square bouding box. So unless you make a sphere the physics will be different. Placing your sculptie in this bounding box in different positions can affect how it relates to the sphere physics.


One thing I was wondering about the terrain textures, how big can they be, 1024 by 1024?
Does it have to be a tiled texture and can I make my own textures? Okay thats 3 things!

I make sculpties of whole sims, for various uses. However, a single sculpty probably wouldn't have a good enough resolution if you applied it to a sim-sized megaprim.

However, if you wanted a sculpty that matched a small section of existing terrain for some reason, that would look pretty good, with the caveat about the physical shape and the appearance not matching mentioned by Caligula.

My scultpies are generated by a script in-world, followed by some manual processing, but it is possible to simplify it somewhat.

Terrain textures are all 512 x 512, and tile across the terrain at a fixed rate of one repeat per 4 meters. It must be a seamless, tilable texture, and yes, you can make your own. As with clothing and skin textures, if you apply a texture that is anything other than 512 x 512 to the terrain, it will get re-scaled by SL (poorly) to a 512 x 512 texture for use in doing the terrain.

Most terrain textures in the Library are also paired with a lower resolution 128 x 128 texture that has the same name, but with " Base" appended to the end of the name. It used to be that you would explicitly specify both a high-rez and low-rez texture for each of the 4 terrain elevations. Now you only specify the high-rez version, and I strongly suspect it no longer uses the low-rez version, but rather that it scales the high-res version down when you assign it, and stores that in the asset server for viewers who have terrain set to low-rez.