building a cave

I really want a cave to use as a secret scripting lab, so I bought a patch of land that slopes quite steeply down to a lake. The area seems quite nice, and the few neighbors all have beautiful houses. They're probably looking at my newbie self and shuddering at what I might build.

The plan was to dig deep into the hill and then cover the hole over with a few rounded prims to make a cave, while keeping the outside as a pretty garden. I started terraforming last night when the neighbors were away, so as not to scare them. I lowered the ground quite a bit starting at the waterline, but it was taking forever and it looked horrible. After a while, I started rezzing some prims and realized that with the 10m limit I was going to need 100s of them. So I decided I needed to do a little more planning, and put things back the way they were.

Does anyone have hints on how to build a nice cave with minimal prims? Is there a particular shape that's good for stretching out to cover a larger area?

The only thing I know that might help is a way to make a prim that exceeds the 10m limit. It is a trick that I picked up from another thread somewhere (I forget where).

Create a ring prim.
Set the Size to 1mx10mx10m
Set the Twist values to 90 and 90.
Set the Hole Size Y to as small a value as possible.

You should get a somewhat flat disc that is very large.
Try the same procedure, but start with a torus or a tube, and it'll get even larger!

Good luck with your cave "digging".

IM me in world and I will show you some caves that will make u go wow.. and then I can help u create some if u want ( free) so if u want some cave advice give me call.

Thanks Sawdust and Snakekiss. That disc trick worked really well. Anyone got one for satellite-disc type objects? I went and got a shape simulator and first time I tried it I covered my entire property and part of the neighbor's with a big brown dome. Still can't get it to do quite what I want. But it's probably better to build a "mountain" out of rocks anyway, with the cave under.

Is there a library of creatable prim shapes like the one Sawdust posted? Or perhaps a recipe book is a better term. I've searched and searched, but haven't found one yet.

I'm slowly getting the hang of building, though I haven't made much progress on the cave yet. Still working on getting believable curved rocks. I can't dig as deep as I'd hoped so most of the cave structure will need to be above ground. For some reason I thought the +-4m limit was based on the lowest point of the section, so I'd be able to dig deep into the hill, when really it's +- whatever the original land was. Will get there eventually!

AAAAAARGH! I've been making rocks all day and they're all still delete-worthy. I was wondering why SL is full of prefab houses with just a few really amazing looking places, and now I know why. This is bloody hard!

You might like to visit my cave, just for fun. You could also take a look in the Ivory Tower of Primitives, in Natoma, which isn't too terribly far away (you can sail from Bodega Bay across the inland sea, if you like).

Theres a rock maker you can pick up free called "Fran rocks" by Francis Chung

my rocks are pretty horrible lookin too actually, due mostly to being too sparse with em.. the areas i have more overlap between the rocks look a lot better'n where they are farther apart... and texturing makes a huge difference, throw a few different texes on each one to see if that helps you.

The secret to great rocks is great rock textures
grab your digital camera and head to the great wilderness
you really cant go wrong

Dearly Darling,

Depoz via Mash Mandala has some nice textures. If you would like to see my cave in Green let me know.

Ever Yours,

Mrs. Showdog Tiger

Depending on the cave, I tend to rely on dropping trees and plants along the seam between prim and ground, just to help hide the transition a bit.

If you catch me in TEAL I'd be happy to demonstrate some of the stuff I've done with caves.

You mean .... outside!? o.O

I used the Fran tool to make some rocks and I'm getting better at texturing them now. Originally I was trying to make a single-prim arch over a hollow in the ground, but I don't think it's possible. You have to build it up out of many smaller rocks.

I got so fed up with my rocks after the first day that I threw them all into the lake to get them out of the way to try something different. After an hour I looked at them again and realized they looked quite good like that. I used them as the starting point for the cave, and got something I'm fairly happy with.

Also I discovered after using the Shape Maker (I think is the name) to make a big dome for the roof framework, it's really hard to work in a cave. You have to have the camera zoomed in really close otherwise it keeps popping out through the cave wall and all you can see is rock. Too fiddly. So all I have is the entrance to the cave, and some walls, but the roof is open to the air. And I end up scripting and testing on the flat land behind the "cave" anyway. Ah well.

You might want to look at Nohona Caverns, on Nohona Isle. I built those caves.

Look for the big mountain with the waterfall, and enter the caverns by walking through the falls at the base of the first cascade, where the falls take a turn toward the lagoon.

In that instance, I placed a lake over the main pit, and then placed the waterfall over the cut in the side that allowed access to the caves. Flat prims behind the falls seal most of the opening in that cut. I used Linden boulders of various shape, streached and twisted, to make basalt rock formations, texturing them with 'lava' terrain textures from the Library.

For your build, you might consider making a plant-overgrown 'landslide' to cover most of the cut. A decent sprinkling of plants can disguise the covering prims a lot, and if you testure the covering prins with the same textures that the terrain in that sim is using, it can be fairly unobtrusive.

Another thought, depending on the lay of the land, is to make a pit, *don't* make the side cut, and then make a prim cave entrance with a teleporter in it to get through the side of the pit. That might allow you to use more real terrain to cover the side of the cave's pit.

Ceera, your caves are amazing! They must have taken ages to build.

Now I wish I had an island. I can only change my land +- 4m =/

Thank you Thistle.

Nohona Caverns took me about a week and a half to two weeks to build, including terraforming the land and making the lake on top, and preparing the area for the waterfall that the Sim owner added for me. That also includes obtaining and placing 40 or so sets of pose balls and the purchased furnishings for the lowest rooms. That was with me putting in about 4 hours per each weekday, and 8 hours per each weekend day.

If you want to see something neat, go back there again, and make sure it's 'night' and you have local lighting turned on. I just upgraded the firepit and torches to use local lighting.

The whole Nohona Isle sim, including terraforming, landscaping, and placing 20 or so homes, took me about a month to build. The sim owner made the waterfall, as he likes doing that, and does them well. I built the rest of the sim myself.