I took some time last weekend to landscape some new land I picked up next to my castle in Second Life . This land was intriguing for a couple of reasons. First, while it was adjacent to my other property, it was in a neighboring sim. That meant that I could not share the total prim count between the properties but I could have individual prims that spanned the sim border. This was good, because I wanted to have a large castle-like stone wall around the forest that I was going to create.
Second, this land contained the top of the hill that defines this local topography. It’s not steep, but is noticeable. There is perhaps a 10 meter difference from the highest point to the lowest point in my parcel. I like this, because it gives me the chance to do more interesting things with the land than if it had been flat.
My usual approach in my relatively brief tenure as a land owner in SL is to raise the land to its highest points all around, and then selectively lower it where desired. Note that the land being at maximum height does not mean it is flat, but rather that it just won’t be moved any higher by the terrain editing tools. Those tools can be used to flatten the land, though I find the smoothing option even more useful, especially around the borders.
I took everything off the land, leaving only the snowy terrain. This land is not private and so there is nothing I can do to change the terrain texture. I have to live with snow unless I want to fake it by covering it with something else generated by sticking prims of various shapes together. The problem with such faking is that it looks fake. So it’s snow.
That said, I decided that I could fudge things a bit by setting the constant season in the forest to be Early Spring. I don’t know about where you live, but in my real life neighborhood we frequently have snow on the ground into April. We even get snow on top of blooming flowers and trees. So I decided that I didn’t have to go with the bare tree and snow covered evergreen look, I could be more flexible.
This was an important thematic decision because you need to look at the big landscaping picture in SL, just as in RL. The nicest looking “random” gardens are often planned to look exactly that way. It wouldn’t hurt to look at some gardening and landscaping books before you start your SL project. I recommend P. Allen Smith�s Garden Home : Creating a Garden for Everyday Living.
One useful trick is to fly up above your land and use Alt-PgUp and Alt-PgDn to adjust the camera so you are looking straight down on your land. Go into Mouse Look and then get things adjusted so that all your land is in the frame. Then take some SL snapshots and print out a couple of copies of the best one. Now draw lines and squiggles on these in pencil to indicate where you are going to build walkways and water features, and place the various flora.
Don’t forget to use rocks in your landscaping. There are nice free ones out there, but you can also buy some from the inworld sources I mention at the end of this entry. These are also easy to make: start with a prim, add a nice texture such as granite (in your Library) and twist and stretch and otherwise torture it it until you get something you like. Make sure you fix the texture mapping when you are done so that it looks natural.
It is very hard to work around trees once they are in place. Trees often extend transparently well beyond what you see, and it can be awkward to move around them to select objects so that you can place them precisely. I recommend that you put in a few according to your plan and then walk around the site. Once you feel you are happy with your direction, take out the trees.
At this point work with things in and close to the ground. Lower areas to make ponds. Place rocks in natural ways. You can use the same shape rock if you rotate it, adjust the height, and make it intersect with other rocks. Add walkways.
Ponds are just flat prims that have a water texture applied to them with some transparency. If you have to abut two prims to make a large enough pond, make the vertical sides of the prims completely transparent. This will help get rid of the visible line dividing the prims. Lower the pond object far enough into the ground so that the straight edges are in the ground. Play with raising and lowering terrain to get the look you want. Add animals and plants. See if the water is warm.
If you want to get fancy, add a simple script to rotate the water slowly. Something like the following will work:
default
{
state_entry()
{
//Rotate the texture - all sides of the prim
llSetTextureAnim(ANIM_ON | SMOOTH | LOOP | ROTATE,
ALL_SIDES, 8, 1, 0, 7, .025);
}
}
You can read more about the function llSetTextureAnim on the Linden Labs LSL wiki. Experiment with the options, you won’t break anything!
I originally thought I would have paths that looked like mulch or leaves and twigs, but I just couldn’t get them to look right. I finally decided to go with wooden walkways that would sometimes have a bit of snow on them. This is just the terrain poking up through the rectangular prim.
Now you can add your trees and other plants. There are free trees and plants that are available from the Create menu item when you right click on the screen. Doing this repeatedly will cycle through a variety of species. Delete what you don’t want but relabel and save the ones you want to use again. As you place these, don’t forget to rotate them and adjust their heights so they don’t all look like clones. Make sure you leave some open areas of various sizes. There are other freely copyable trees that you can see and obtain as you travel around SL.
Among the trees will be some small plants, even though they are labeled as trees. All my low plants in the forest are these freebies. The Linden-provided trees and plants are all hacked so that they count as one prim each.
If you want to add more variety, go to some of the inworld nurseries and garden centers and pick out a few specimens or clusters of trees. This adds variety to your setting. Aim for something that is natural looking. When you are purchasing trees, note whether that can be freely copied once you buy them. This can be quite economical, but make sure you really want to see a lot of copies of the same tree.
If the trees are modifiable, adjust the heights and widths of a few. Another option is to buy a pack of a dozen or so trees. These trees are usually at least three prims and can be more if they have exceptional detail or are taller than 10 meters.
Finally, add some animals such as birds in a few places, but don’t overdo it.
Many of the inworld animals look like giant stuffed animals, though there are some very fine realistic looking ones. Decide on the look you want and then stick to it.
I teleported to a garden in SL on Saturday and immediately thought it looked garish. After walking around for a while, I decided that the look was rather impressionistic such as a garden scene in a Monet painting. You can do this in SL. Things don’t have to be just like real life. You can have a palm tree in the snow and a snow covered evergreen on a beach. Have fun with it but look at the big picture before you plant anything!
Some SL Inworld Sources
- Heart Garden Center at Heart 1 124,125,29. I think these are the best plants in SL and the collection is starting to increase nicely. Sells packs of multiple plants.
- Bliss Garden Center by Luna Bliss at Callahans Isle 4.127,501. Immense selection and do take the time to look through it before settling on what you want. Because of the huge numbers of textures, this location can take a long time to rez. It is up around 500 meters and make sure you visit the park down on the ground.
- The Design Center, Idea City at Idea City 70,192,40. Great tutorials on textures. Visit the upper floors.
- Something Fishy at Kishijoten 57,35,22. Good source for duckies.
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