I want to build an undersea lair.

If you wanna see some underwater fun come to Catacombs Island, come to the club and start descending below.....it gets interesting down there

One way to simulate water is by rezzing a "phantom" prim or prims, making those prims whatever shade of blue you want and setting them to the amount of "transparency" you desire. You could go further by using a customized texture instead of just "blue". That texture could even be animated with a texture animation script.

The first thing you would want to do however is to build your "underwater" building and THEN rez the water to envelop it. You could then build a "cover" building with no physical entry point from outside. The cover building would be a shell around your "underwater" lair and hide it from view so that the whole thing is self-contained.

You could then set a teleport site nearby or even on a different parcel of land you own. People would teleport directly into your "underwater" world which would preserve the illusion that it is actually underwater, even though it's not.

The problem with building something in SL's "water", I think, is that it isn't all that convincing as water. At least not in my opinion. I'm sure you might be able to incorporate my suggestion (rezzing your own water) with actually building under SL's water but I've never tried it so I don't know how it would look.

Thanks for the tips, I have contacted Salazar Jack and he is looking to see what he has. I have had a couple of other people show me places too. One had water 65m deep!!, just not a lot though, waiting to hear whether I can change the landscape or not. I'll check out Catacombs Island when I get a spare moment.

Some good points there Shawn, if I can't find anywhere decent I may have to do something like that.

Is it possible to use the water that is underneath the land? ie, leave the land there but make a hole through to the water and then build my undersea place under the land?

Hi Tai

AV's can't go through the ground at all afaik, objects can intrude only partially into the ground. If you make an ground immersed object hollow, you still cannot go below the ground level.

The only way to get an object totally below ground is to place an object on some lowered ground and then raise it (the ground level, that is). Most sims only allow +- 4 M ground level transformation.

I once built an indoor swimming pool by lowering the ground only below my house and placing the pool above the hole. There are plenty of water textures around! I used a flat phantom water texture cover, but I should have tried a phantom 10 x 10 x 10 but it is too late now, its all gone.

Ed

We have an underwater house on Cosy Cove. It is kinda invisible, but maybe you are able to find it and even get in.

Looking at what other people have done could always be inspiring!

Mel

I can show you pictures of my former underwater home - IM me in world.

can you IM me in world with an LM and possible rates and prim allowance? It's possible I may be interested.

I've built a three-story building below water level, but as others mentioned, that blue haze from being underwater permeates everything. I took it apart and filled in the huge hole when I couldn't remove the water form inside the structure.

I would agree with the idea of making an above-ground build, and placing in inside a larger enclosed structure that 'fakes' being under water. You can even get fish that swim around, to enhance the effect!

Half of the land that I am accquiring on an island sim is under water. I bought that part mostly for extra prim count, but will put a skybox above it and maybe a yacht anchored on the water as a party place.

Another point about actually being under water. Some animation overrides have a 'swim' mode, and if you 'fly' under water, it shows you as swimming. The Abranimations AO does that, I know...

This not ment as insult but as suggestion ya asked for... forget it Back in the day... I had a very sizable underwater build. As far as Im aware it was the biggest habitated udnerwater reef ever in SL. Coral, sharks, fish, crabs, mantray, octopus, ect, ect.

I also built a suba set with a built in AO (back when they first came out) with custom suba animation, working bubbles from the regulator, whole 9 yards. From expereince your sales will be so small its not worth considering. Besides there is quite few sets out there now. Chances of getting someone to "rent gear with hour of air" I figure is beyond slim.

Just trying save ya some let down hon. But if want do it just for the fun of it... go for it I never regreted the time I put into that build in the least.

No insult taken at all, I appreciate the feedback. I have seen some of the other gear around and I have spent a lot of time making mine better, well I think its better. And I do realise that getting people interested is going to be the hard part. I am working on having incentives to get people to hire the gear. Once I solve all my scripting problems I am planning on having some competitions and offering prize money. And other stuff like that .... lots of work to do yet.

Transparency usualy make the prims behind the trans. prim look darker as the color values are added to each other. I might be wrong, but i don't think it will look right.

Well if you plan on going ahead with it.. great Im down with anyone who has same love of the ocean as me. Let me know if need any help, and if its within my capabilities Ill do whatever can. I got tons of underwater lanscaping and animals packed away in a deep dark folder "somewhere."

One these days I need to break out my old surfing waves. By todays standards they probably archaic and can use being brought up to date with SL advancements; but just maybe its a project worth going back to....

For the OP... Ive spent more time underwater in SL then on dry land (kinda weird for a demonette AV, but ya gonna do...) After lot experince working with below sea level builds/compounds I can say theres been lot good suggestions given here. Its been said but I will reinteret (sp).... the blue tinge is something ya just gotta work with. Having "window ports" is very realistic way of handling it since the tinge will be easily explainable. Keep your rooms tight and small and its not as bad. Ive also found using white walls set to full bright offset it a bit.

Well I bought some land, on a corner of an island. So far I have sunk as much of the land as I can to 20m deep, which is the max I can go there. I have made a big cave in under the land with 2 entrances. Now I need to do a lot of landscaping and adding in plants and fish etc. I would very much appreciate any help with this that anyone is willing to offer. I haven't got any stuff to put in the water yet at all and I want to make it as unique as I can. If you are interested, just IM me and I'll tp you to have a look. I have been a bit busy lately so I am only on for a couple of hours a day so hopefully I'll see you in there.

I am also very interested in building a house on the ocean floor, but there doesn't seem to be any land available for that (not even waterfronts, anymore). Are there possibly other ways of doing it?