What is Water

Is there a type of water which can be used in builds? To be specific, is it possible to build a structure on the mainland and fill it with water of some kind?

You can buy (or make) prim water. Just like other prims but with a water texture on it and set to phantom.

For ones you can buy, some use multiple prims to make the visual effect nicer. Others use sculpted prims which is really nice for rapidly-flowing water. Some contain scripts so you can interact with swimmers, which are sortofa special kind of AO that does swimming anims when you cross the water prims.

So if I wanted to build a mainland house which was suitable inside for mermaids, does that mean the water would have to be scripted?

The mermaid AO I use registers an error when it's used on land. Would the scripting you mention signal to the AO that it was in water?

Er.. It depends on what you're looking for. Water, prim or not, doesn't look that great when you're in it looking out. "Real" water doesn't look as bad because the viewer plays games with lighting but even that's not great. IMO, anyway.

For things like hottubs or pools, it's not bad but if you want to make, say, a giant fishbowl for mermaids, it might look weird when you're inside it.


This really depends on how the AO scripts work.

The easy thing for a script to do is check the "real" water height in the region and do the swim anims when the avatar is at or below that height.

The harder bit is to have a script in the water that sends out a message on some private chat channel whenever somebody goes in (or out of) the water. The AO knows to look for these messages and play the correct animation, depending on if you're in or out of the water and if you're moving or hovering and all that.

/me suggests checking out Siggy's WaterWorks and seeing what they have. I don't know that he's got mermaid animations but, IIRC, everything else is about as good as it will get in SL. I think the AO is based on ZHAO so if you already have mermaid anims, you should be able to plug them into Siggy's swimmer.

edit: and when I say AO, I mean just AOs that are specifically designed to do swimming stuff - something that most AOs do not do.

Thanks, Meade. I hadn't realised it was going to be so complicated. I'm about to go in-world in a few minutes: I'll have a look at Siggy's WaterWorks while I'm there.

If you can find something that meets your needs, it won't be complicated.

While you're at Siggy's, make sure to go into a pool and notice how things look when you're under prim water. That and go off-island and see how it compares to 'real' water.

/me is still not sure what sorta build you're thinking about but I have a friend who owns Siggy's prim water and can probably whip up something quickly for you, if needed.

volumetric lighting is easy... volumetric shadows, not so much. and that's what you'd need to make prim water really look decent from inside.

there is a method to do it with very subtly shaded layers, but it takes a LOT of prims and tends to interfere with being able to click on things.

AO's, like Meade says... it's down to how they are built

Buy a water parcel and build a little island with a hut with a trapdoor that opens into the water. Or build a house over the water.
Or buy a parcel where terraforming can set the ground below the water.

Real water is much better than prim water.

The 'real' water (and haze) effects you see are done via preset GLSL shaders. You cannot apply a similar water material to a prim as this is not something Linden Labs allows developers to have access to.

Of course there are various user made hacks, but without access to higher level shaders that enable environmental and Fresnel reflections and normal mapping they cannot replicate the look of LL water.

OK, I've taken a look at Siggy's WaterWorks, and went into the pools. The prim water is nice, but it isn't as good as the real water that surrounds islands. Oddly, I couldn't even approach the pools whilst wearing a mermaid AO; it was as if there was an invisible force field surrounding them. No such problem with a walking AO though.

So real water is what I want, which means I can't have the set-up I'd envisioned. And buying a water parcel looks unlikely due to the cost. So, my question now is: if I have a mainland plot, can I dig a pit deep enough to make a room beneath water? One of Osprey's replies suggests this cannot be done everywhere on land, so how can I tell? Is it something to do with the altitude of the land?

You need to find a landlord who will allow terraforming. If that is allowed, all you need to do is press 'Ctrl+5' when you're on your parcel and use the Bulldozer tool to flatten, raise, lower, smooth or roughen the land on your plot.

The Bulldozer can be adjusted to different sizes and strengths so you can easily dig a lake or inlet or bay to suit yourself. It may take a few attempts to get the land looking how you want but the Bulldozer is a fairly straightforward tool to master. It even has a revert feature which will kind of set the land back the way it was originally baked.

If you want a nicely graded or landscaped body of water it's best to get a parcel that isn't much higher than 20 metres, which is typically sea-level in SL, or else you will practically have to dig a well if you buy on higher ground. You can check the suitability of a parcel on the coordinates following the region name at the top of your client: the third, or z-coordinate, gives the altitude of your avatar.

Another thing to bear in mind is that you should really be adjacent to a larger body of water. I dug a 4,000 square metre bay on my parcel and it still feels kind of cramped when I go swimming because I'm on an island and the 'open sea' is just a visual effect. I think the ideal would be to have something like that (or even a fraction of the size you could call 'home') but with access to a sim of open water.

I'm pretty sure landscaping is permitted, but I will double check to make sure.



So, if the z co-ordinate is 80, does that mean I would need a well 60 metres deep?

That'll get you to the surface of the water assuming that the water level is at the default 20m. I expect you'll want a further 20m or so for some vertical cavorting. And then you must consider the effect that camming into the surrounding land will have on your experience.

I have the vague idea that many estates limit the ammount you can alter the elevation of your land either in the covenant or by setting some settings.

Bear in mind also that most mainland regions (there are a few exceptions) allow only +/- 4 m of terraforming from original height. People still manage to make mainland look hideous with stretched textures despite this limitation.

Private estate rentals may allow more and on ones own private island anything goes.

Hmm, my plans are not looking good, are they? Rethink time, perhaps.

I had no idea there were such restrictions. Thanks for pointing it out to me, Rime. Sigh. I would have settled for an underwater room.

I'd suggest setting up a parcel trade with someone who has a plot more suited to your needs.

The thing is, I will be renting the plot at a low cost - can't afford coastal prices

forget coastal prices.... trade for a water plot =)

That would be cool. Because I hang around the Blake Sea a lot, I thought all water plots were Linden protected. But I'm going to have a look around to see if there are any I can afford. Thanks.

there aren't a ton of them, but they tend to be way cheaper than anything else.