Designing a Grotto

So I'm just getting into building, and I've run into some things I haven't been able to solve. I tried search, but it really wasn't helping.
1) Animating water? is there a guide for this anywhere on how to go about it?

2) Water "reflections" - as this is a cavern with a pool in it, I'd like to give it the illusion of reflecting on the close walls and low ceiling. Anyone seen this done and/or could guide me on it?

3) ambient light - Can the light in a room or area be lowered? In addition to creating the reflected light, I'd like to lower the light in the area.

Thanks in advance.. I think thats all I'm stuck on right now.

1. This one needs a simple script. Look in your inventory inside the 'Library' folder. Look for the scripts folder in here, and there should be a couple of scripts called 'anim smooth' or 'anim smooth rotate'. Try dropping this into a prim to see how it works. It basically slides or rotates the texture of the prim. There are also a few watery textures in the library which you can use to simulate water. There are various other ways to simulate water but this one is the most common.

2. Since the SL client doesn't do reflections, you have to fake this. A common technique is making a mirror of all the prims above, and put it below the supposed reflection surface that is set semi transparent. You don't need to do it for the whole grotto, if the grotto is quite large. Just the few that are near the reflection surface.

3. You can't directly lower the light intensity in an area. While there is a 'turn on shadows' option, not everyone uses it. The best way to do this is to use darker textures or changing the colour of the surfaces to a grey. If you have a graphics editor or paint program, you can grab a plain stony texture and darken it, and also add light effects to it to simulate light being casted from torches or holes in the wall, etc. I'd also turn the 'full bright' option in the 'texture' tab for the surfaces, so that when its really night outside, the cave doesn't become too dark, since it preserves it brightness.

I might not have been clear enough on #2.. I don't want to create a mirror effect. I'm thinking more of something like when you have a light in/around water in a dark room, you get weird light patterns on the walls as it bounces around..

Aha, okay sorry.

In this case, you have to do this with textures. Basically you can create an alpha texture that has bits of 'light' on it. It should look similar to the water ones. Then apply it onto a separate prim in front of your grotto walls. If your grotto walls are made of irregular shapes, just make a copy of them in the same location and then scale them slightly bigger to make that 'outer' layer.

Next, you need a script that slides the texture back and forth slowly, instead of only going in one direction. You may have to adjust the transparency to get the right effect.

If you need to find out how to create alpha textures, many have asked this in the texturing threads.

I think I'll be headed there now

Something I did, which doesnt sound exactly like what you are looking for in #2 but close....

I did this on the ceiling of my grotto,

* used the copy function to place a copy of the original prim smack up against it.
* Used a full alpha texture to make it an invisaprim and set the width .005.
* Placed the water texture on the front face of the prim only and animated. Both the water texture and the animation match the actual water in the pond.
* messed with the transparency till the water was *just* visible against the original roof prim


The result is *close* to the effect of the water reflecting on the roof, well with some imagination - lol - but either way I liked the effect

Do you still have this created and somewhere publicly viewable so I could check it out?