Precision Land Shaping

Hello Builders,

The provided land shaping tools are outstanding. One thing I've
noticed is they seem to lack precision.

Three questions come to mind:

1. What kind of scripted tools exist out there
(besides the land flattener) for shaping terrain?

2. Can the land flattening script be placed into a smaller prim or one with a
different geometry? (for more detailed work such as steps)

3. How do you create curves or swirls in the terrain using land tools?

Thanks in advance.

Darwin Tiger

Darwin

You asked:

2. Can the land flattening script be placed into a smaller prim or one with a
different geometry? (for more detailed work such as steps)

I have certainly modified the shape for the land flattener. The script is just a surface level one and does not rely on the prim being a certain size to work. I have made the tool smaller for delicate work and its just fine.

I'd certainly like to know how to create an irregular, natural looking depression in the ground. I'm trying to do a small hot spring, in an 8 meter by 20 meter area. It needs to look like a natural pond, and be deep enough for Avatars to stand in up to neck deep. I can landscaps around the rim with plants and 'rocks', but would like the shape of the hole to at least not be square!

I'll tell you how I made the craters at the south end of LostFurest dAlliez:

Fly over the top of the depression and looking down, with your "raise" tool set to the smallest possible size, run it smoothly and rapidly over and over the curve you want the "edge" to have. Don't worry if it's uneven, you're just working on the inside "face" of the depression here. Check now and then from the side and stop when you have a "rim" all around the depression.

Then once you have a nice rim about it, use "flatten" and "smooth" working in and out just outside it to get it cleanly contiguous with the surrounding land.

It might be helpful to think of the mesh deformation tools as a set of artist's brushes. Your canvas has a grain. If you move the brush orthogonally you get a certain type of deformation, and certain problems like long straight ridges appear. This can make the shape of the depression look artificial. Moving the brush diagonally helps to avoid those ridges, but certain other artifacts can occur: jagged points. I've seen a mild case of this even in Guild Wars, where the terrain sculpting is generally of very high quality.

The solution is to sweep the brush across the canvas in continuous motions, varying the orientation, and never lingering in one spot. If you are using raise land or lower land, switch to smooth land often.




To paraphrase your comment, I'd like the shape of the 'rock' to at least not be square! Or rectangular. Or any twisted box prim shape with pointy corners. Angular 'rocks' usually have the look of prims stuck in the ground.

You might like to try thinking in terms of rockfaces like those you'd see in a quarry or a cliffside, rather than individual boulders. Assemble an aggregate as if you were sculpting a rockface, not making a rock. The basic component of the aggregate is a convex curved prim. In general you want shallow curvature to be most prominently placed, because that gives the least distortion to the stone texture. The interesting way to assemble a rockface from these prims is to pay attention to the intersection curves between the prim surfaces. These curves can look somewhat natural.

Making your own texture is important, since you can custom apply a texture that gives a rough natural look to the intersection curves, so they look more like natural fissures.

You can see an image of this sort of thing here, post #7 in Ingrid's thread