Water falls and pools

I've recently started building here in SL, trying to landscape some land myself.

I've been experimenting with some waterfalls and pools. I would like to build them longer than the maximum size prim, so have to attach them together. My problem is that not matter what I try, whenever I look into the water, I can always see the seam where the prims are attached. I look at other larger pools, and look at it from all angles, and you can't readily see where the two prims are linked.

My guess is I have to do something with the textures on the side where they are linked, but can't figure out what.

I've been searching through old posts here, but haven't seen anything that addresses this.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

You will never make the seams totally go away, but you can make them less noticable by using an alpha texture on the sides of the prims. If you are online right now I will log in and show you how.

Ashley, you want to make sure that the textures line up perfectly. This entails two things:

1. Make sure the textures are correctly aligned to the prims
   
2. Make sure your prims are perfectly aligned to each other
   

Any water texture worth using for your pools will be tileable. Assuming your texture is, make sure that your texture-tab repeats per face are whole numbers, offsets are zero, and rotation is 0.
To keep the prims aligned, I always use round numbers and the grid. Most of my water prims are 10m x 10m, and snapped to a 10m grid.

Pop around to Blue Water Lake in Munro and Weber and take a look at the water. We're using Siggy's excellent swimmable prim water (make sure you get his Swimmer 1.1 attachment).

To create this, I set my grid size to 10m units with no sub-unit snapping. I dropped one 10x10m water prim, and positioned it using the grid so that its X and Y coords were multiples of 10. (The Z coord was just chosen by eye).
Then, selecting the prim and shift-dragging it along the X axis exactly 10m produced a second tile, perfectly joining the first. Do this a few times to get approximately the width you want. Then shift-select the entire strip and shift-drag it along the Y axis in 10m increments to fill the relevant area.

You will probably need to resize some of your edge tiles afterwards. When you do, make sure that resize both sides is off, and stretch textures should also be off. Note as well that as you create or manipulate tiles, for a short while (a second or so) after the edit they will often not line up with their neighbours. Give them a moment and you will see that soon enough, SL or OpenGL or something else will notice how good the numbers look, and everything will snap into well-joinedness.

These are just guidelines to get you started. As you become more proficcient you will learn how to use non-integral repeats by compensating using offsets, or how to handle rotated textures - but most of the time you won't need these tricks anyway.

You can either apply a transparent texture, or drop this script in the prim:

default
{
    state_entry()
    {
      llSetAlpha(0.0,ALL_SIDES);
      llSetAlpha(1.0,0);
    }
}

This will make all but one surface (the top surface of a box) of the prim completely transparent. Doing it this way will even keep the loading texture from showing up on the other sides.

Or your problem could just be what Argent describes

You have to choose your texture well and wisely for pools and horizontally placed water...

What may have looked like a stunning texture BEFORE you added motion suddenly looks ridiculously and obviously tiled..ie..you can see the squares of textures go by.

Venous textures obviate this or at least downplay this unsightly delineation

Venous textures are ones that look like 'veins' are running through them, much like a marbelized look .

Matter of fact, I've used marble textures instead of water textures quite successfully for horizontal water designs like pools and lakes

Toy Lafollette teaches placing horizontally placed prims set in motion, ie with the water script in them, usually venous-textured, one atop the other at varied angles and each with greater transparency so you can see the one below it. I think she likes a 90 degree change per each prim. This technique is wonderful and gives an amazing realism.

But if you wish to use textures that somehow miss the boat when translated to moving textures...because you bought them, you love them. and somehow you WILL make this work ..hehe...do this...

...DO make their sides transparent...that alpha jargon MEANS making something transparent. PLACE them carefully, one right next to the other quite neatly. Perhaps use the 'flip' area of the textures box to see if you can make the textures appear to be less seamed and the design appear to flow onto the next prim as if one canvas. Do NOT add the water script to these prims.

THEN...

Make flat squares or ovals on TOP of these prims (the sides of which shall be made 90 percent transparent as well)...texture them with Linden Labs ripple 2 texture in their wonderful waterfall texture folder in your inventory 'library'. You may vary the transparency of these as you should all your water prims..for realism's sake..and overall effect..perhaps add a blue tint if your water is to be less aqua/green. Lastly....

ADD THE WATER SCRIPT TO THESE RIPPLE 2 PRIMS...but do NOT make them run white water rapids fast. That is, unless you truly feel the need to make folks get nervous when they look at your work. Go to the water script, to the LAST numerical parameter..and change it to .02 for slowest to .09 for a very, very fast flow.

This will retain the beauty that you loved in that texture you bought AND give the appearance that they/the water are in motion.

Happy building to you!

Although likely not the best in game, I have been experimenting with water features on my property (landmark in signature below), both flowing water and waterfalls, which you may wish to have a look at.

I also bought a duck. The goldfish, however, I created myself.

Lewis

I love making water features. Excellent tips so far!

If you need a 100% transparent texture for those prim edges, drop me an IM, I have a free one I can give you.

I used to make waterfalls with prims only, but lately I've been exploring using particles, with really fun results.

Here's the waterfalls and river Leena and I just built in the New Holstice sim:

(plenty more pics at Snapzilla )

And last night I built this one is in Mew, but it is only temporary (just playing around with terrain and stuff):


And unfortunately we've flattened Fhtagn Point to prepare for moving, so the 6 waterfalls I had ther are now but a memory:


Plenty of Fhtagn Point pics can still be found on Snapzilla , though.

-Ghoti