How to change from sand to grass on land

I am brand new to SL. But I would like to change a portion of my land from sand to green grass. Can that be done with the tools. If the grass is long will the wind blow it?

Plant sod.

I think as far as the base texture goes, that is set by whoever is running the server, at least that's what I was told. I've always had to create prims and put a new texture on it if I wanted to change what the land looked like.

E

Unless you own an island you are stuck with the terrain texture on your land. Having the terrain texture that suits you is an important part of selecting a land parcel in SL. You have two choices: move to a sim with a grassy look, or put down 10m x 10m box prims with a grass texture. There are many different different grass textures in the library section of your inventory.

If you want long grass that blows in the wind then you also need to plant some Linden grass, which you can also find in the library. I think that you will need to flatten your parcel so that the Linden grass will poke through your grass prims.

Gee, people, way to give a newbie a straight answer.

Basically, estate (private island) owners can change their terrain texture. Other sims remain as they were when initially established.

P2

edit: Bambam's message had not posted when I wrote mine.

Third Choice: Field of Dreams

Field of Dreams is a scripted device that emits particles to simulate ground cover. You can get a very nice field of wheat, grass, or poppy flowers this way.

You can probably find a copy of it for free at Yadni's Junkyard.

If you want a more organic feel, try playing with toris and/or spheres with ground/grass textures on them rather than boxes. You don't need to cover every square inch, add patches here and there for a natural look. They will contour to the land better and your lot won't end up looking like a putting green.

~gigi

I'm an Estate Manager and architect for a couple of sims. The terrain textures are only controllable on a whole-sim basis. It's impossible to change just one selected area, such as the parcel that you own. At best, the sim manager can 'tilt' the divisions, raising or lowering the rough dividing lines between the 4 terrain textures (which get spread in 4 altitude-defined bands), by adjusting limits at each corner of the sim.

Haven't tried the 'particle generator' method that 'Field of Dreams' apparently uses. I would worry with that about possible lag and rezzing issues with that option. I have a slow computer, so quite often someone else's particle effects are just a cloud of ugly grey squares to me.

The most efficient method is to use a combination of grass-textured prims and Linden 'grass' plantings. The grass textures are in your Library folder in Inventory, inside the Terrain Textures folders. The 3D 'grass' is also in the Library folder in Inventory, filed with trees and other plants. I can't remember the enclosing folder's name...

I am very new. I guess the estate manager runs the sim.
He or she can join areas together. So as a land owner i am limited to what i can do to the land? Where would I go to get started to learn how to build ???
Some basic information? What is a prim?? Why do objects get defined by how many "Prims"
So i could get put alot of grass up but that would not be land but prim objects. Like house etc.
Skua

Hi Skua,

An Estate Manager is a person delegated by the Sim owner to do many of the tasks required to run a sim. For example, I can ban or grant access to individuals, I can join or define parcels of land... I can even fix the position of the sun in the sky! It's a very high-responsibility position.

As a land owner, you usually have limited ability to terraform your land. On the mainland, that means you can change the elevation of the terrain by +/- 40 Meters from it's default shape. while on private islands like the ones I manage, the terraform limit is as much as +/- 100 Meters.

You have a limited allocation of server resources that you may use, depending on how much land you own. Each object in SL is made of one or more 'prims', or primitive shapes, like cubes, spheres, rings and cylanders. So for example a simple platform bed might be 6 prims - the headboard, the platform, two pillows, and two parts for the mattress and the blanket. These are linked together into one 'object', but still count as six prims. A more complex bed, with bed posts, drapes, and the like, might take as much as 40 prims to design. Linden plants are sort of special. They look complex, but only count as one prim each, even for a big tree with lots of branches.

A 512 M2 plot of land is allocated 117 prims. Each additional 512 M2 of land that you own in the same sim adds to your combined total allowed for that sim. If you placed a 100-prim house and 17 1-prim plants on a 512 M2 lot, you wouldn't be able to add more items without buying more land in that sim. You could not, for example, put a 100-prim house and a 40 prim bed on a single 512 M2 plot of land, as that would exceed your 117 prim limit. But if you owned a second plot of land anywhere in that same sim, you could use its prim allocation to supplement the first plot's limit. Say, 200 prims on one plot, and 34 prims on the other.

A single, entire sim can support 15,000 prims. To give you an idea how that adds up, an island sim I recently built, with a water park, 20 partially furnished homes, and lots of plants and other features, used perhaps 7,000 prims to create. That still leaves a lot of prims for people to use in furnishing their homes. For example, a 1448 M2 lot had 97 prims already on it, for the house and landscaping plants, and still had about 220 prims free for furniture and other items on the parcel. By the time the house was fully furnished and had been remodeled to expand it a bit, I had 40 prims or so left available.

Do a find search in-world for 'Ivory Tower', and locate the Ivory Tower of Primitives. It has one of the best in-world tutorials on how to build.

Welcome again to SL.

Found it at Outy Banjo's place, Particle Paradise (its in his picks). L$450

Lewis

The original Field of Dreams should be no more than 1$L. It was a freebie. But maybe for $450, there are some new textures or something.

I just looked at YadNi's Junkyard and couldn't find it. Looks like he's cleaned up his Freebie of the month area, since I was last there.

EDIT:

Was looking at the copy that I have. Looks like Bedazzle put it into the public domain, so I'll put a copy in my freebie section at my new park opening next week in BonnyDoon.

Yeah, I have Outy's particle landscaping tool, I was trying to spice up my grassy mountainside and it made a glorious rose garden. However, like anything particles, it can be quite laggy and I removed it.

To the original poster, there are tons of freebie texture packs floating around, and you can have some really neat grass by just slapping a texture on a prim and sticking it in the ground.