underground homes?

I was wanting to make an underground home or bunker type building. But land bleeds through building. The only thing I can think of to do is recess ground and place building, then make more prims to cove hole around home. But my prims would never look like ground. I live in snowy area.

Any ideas ?

Thanks
Az

Unfortunately, you can't actually build underground in SL. The best you can do is make a big hole, build inside it, then cover it over with prims. Making the hole can be difficult at best, because in most sims there's a terraforming limit of only a few meters.

You can texture prims to exactly match the snowy ground where you live. I used to make my own matching textures using aerial snapshots of terraformed-flat ground taken from directly overhead during the brightest part of the SL day, but we don't have to fuss with that anymore in most parts of the grid. Just look in the Library section of your inventory for the snow sim textures. The "base" textures take forever to rez . . . try the other numbered snowy ground textures 'til you find the one that matches the ground in your region. You can cut n skew and twist and smush your snow-textured prims to match uneven ground, or even to build up hills and snow forts and snowmen.

BTW, although it's true there is a limit to how deep you can dig in the snow sims, you can make a pretty good hole if you start with land that has a natural depression, or next to a hill. A good part of my parcel started out as a natural bowl, or small valley, and I've terraformed a berm (with primmy snow mountains) around the edge and a deep hole under the frozen pond (if you ever happen to be in Grindlewald, cam under there and see the altitude diff between that and the top of the berm!). Terraform your parcel with the "revert" feature to check out the lay of your land before you choose a place to start digging. If you want any help or suggestions, just drop me an IM.

I love being a snow avie, in part because I can use drastic terraforming that wouldn't look realistic if it were "dirt."

Not exactly. It depends on how your texture detail is set. I have mine set to no detail because it seems to help with lag. Any holes covered with prims stand out like a sore thumb.

Maybe it'd look better to you if you use a screenshot of the no-detail ground to texture the prims? Of course, it won't look the same to folks with higher levels of detail.

I've tried turning down that setting to see if it reduced lag, but didn't notice very much improvement. The best setting to change to reduce lag, in my experience, is draw distance -- I often set it set to minimum. Oh yeah, and I don't use ripple water -- I don't know anyone who does use it, though.

It wont look perfect, but the library terrain textures are pretty darn close. Kim made an excellent post about how to do it, so I wont go much more into it, but, you can help cover your fake ground with some trees or other visual diversion and most casual fly overs will never know you have an underground hideout.

It is possible to creat an "underground building, and a great tool to use if you can get a copy is the Land Editing script. Basically, it does the same functions as the regular way, with the exception that... its IN a prim that YOU control by dragging it around. You could even sit on that prim so you dont get over 90 meters away with your camera view and need to stop, and possibly raise or lower a section you did not intend. Creating the building you want below ground is often easier, then adding in the modifyable script to the floor units, and lowering the whole thing at one time. After thats accomplished, remove the script and your set.

If you would like a copy of that script, send me an IM in world... I have 3 versions already in prims..... the sizes are 8meters ², 4meters ²
and 2meters ²... i can give a copy of each of them to you when i log in and see a request.

Thanks everyone. Zermes, I will try to catch up to you this weekend as I wont be able to get ingame for next couple nights.

Thanks again people
Az

I was hoping to build a basement by creating a hole, only to find water just below the surface (i live on an small island). I had to build my basement just above the water level and build land up around it, creating a stately hill!

Actually.. there are some great underwater basements that are completely sealed off from above, that most people wouldn't even realise are underwater. As long as you can go deep enough to seal everything udnerwater, it should just leave you with a smokey sort of room, which works out great for a smokey nightclub feel.

Luckily for me, I live in Olive.. one of the few areas where extensive terraforming is allowed. I have a 50m hole under my house for playing movies in.

If you made a submersible vehicle and just set it under water in stationary position, would that keep out the water ?

Just thinking out loud here again

Az

Believe me with enough blending and planting skill and the right eye for shapes you can use sampled terrain to create realistic landscape that almost no one will ever spot is not linden land.

If anyone wants to see example of this IM me in world, as I have vast areas of such places so well hidden that almost no one has ever found them yet, even walking around the areas.

I have worked in snow and non snow terrain and the 'obvious prims' can be made to look a LOT less obvius or not at all with texture care and shape morphing...its only flat panelling that tends to stand out. I have got so now i can copy the shape of land as it was before and end up with a result that looks like nothing changed in some areas.