How Do I Put Down Sculpted Grass on my Ground?

[Kascha Matova]

I'm trying to create a real grass look for the areas surrounding my house. I have terraforming rights on the property, and I bought this Land Map thingy that allows me to set up these sensors and it maps the ground for me so I can set up the textures with the sculpt maps.

I already figrued out how to use the machine. I used it the other day with one of the library bluegrass textures and it worked well. If I was satisfied with two dimensional grass, I'd be done here, but I'm not. Too much to love about grass that I can walk through instead of on top of.

My problem is in buying the grass itself. I've seen some really nice sculpted grass, but all of it seems to come attached to a prim or megaprim already in predetermined shapes and sizes (usually several in a kit) and from the particular manufacturer I bought from, they are no copy.

My machine wants a texture to use, but when I rez the grass, it's an object (the textured prim) not a texture. So that's out. Also out is making my own prim "board" to cover the area I need and then use their texture to finish it. Now I have 999L worth of foresty grass that won't help me with my ground texture at all because the grass prims are the wrong size, the wrong shape, or both.

These 1 prim grass textures that they say can cover a field easily. Is that what you do with them? Texture your own prim (or the ones made by machines like mine) using that texture and then it repeats or something?

[Peewee Musytari]

Have you tried particle grass? If you type particle grass into marketplace search there are some really cool ones now.

You can use the textured sculted prims as a base and do mixed patches of particle grass and flowers on top.

[WADE1 Jya]

I like particle grass best too! Got lots of that growing around my sim, its cooler than any sculpty cause its more deeply detailed :matte-motes-asleep-2:

[Persephone Emerald]

I tried a couple different types of 1 prim scupty grass & found Blue Field to be the best. Their pack comes with several different sizes & shapes, but each piece is Copy/ No Transfer. All the pieces below megaprim size (under 10m in all directions) are also modifiable, so you can stretch them to fit your space better.  The textures are really nice on these pieces, so they look good from a distance & when walking through them.

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/39345

http://slurl.com/secondlife/StormWind/170/112/24

 

Blue Field meadow grasss

 

Another meadow grass

 

(Edit to add pictures & SLURL for shop)

[Tiffy Vella]

Kascha, I'm also a fan of real grass you can get your hooves/toes into, and have a really nice grass thing going on over in my garden, using mainly Kidd grass, and some Organica (Both are prims that you rezz on your land. Kidd is no copy, but very good value-per-prim. Organica is copy/mod and has different shapes for going over your bumpy bits but I find it takes more prims to cover the area well). I also love some particles, like others here have said (Fluffy Green Meadows is well worth a visit for this and very inspiring, but these really only suit flat land). All of them have plain grass/ flowery grass versions that are very very pretty.

I have no idea what your machine is. I wish I could help you as I'm a huge fan of proper grassy grass. I assume the machine maps your land, and helps you make a texturable sculpt map that conforms to it? But you want sculpt maps that stick up from the ground in clumps and are texturable? To me, it sounds like you need to be sculpting your own prims and custom texturing them, so that they fit with your land contours.

You need more specialist info, so if I were you, I'd be contacting the machine's maker, or any support groups/websites of theirs.

Sorry I'm not more help.

[Tiffy Vella]

Here's Organica and Kidd.....It's surprisingly low prim for how lush it is.....edited to say the basic green and small white flowers are kidd...the dry wheat and larger white daisies are organica, some dandelions are kidd, and some are fluffy green meadows. Kidd and Fluffy emit little grasshopper/dandelion seeds.

[Marianne Little]

My guess is that the device you bought allows you to only texture the ground two dimensional. It is no way you can transform your ground into three dimesional grass.

You say you have grass for several hundred L that  you can't use because it has wrong size. But you see, the most natural way to use this prim grass is to let them overlap. Mix plain flat green grass squares and circles with flowering thicker organic shapes, use poppies and bluebells... let them grow out like they were sprouting out of the ground! If you have open spots between, you can put down a cluster of sculpted stones, or something else botanical. Or just leave it open.

I really miss my SL garden. It's a shame that RL takes up so much of my time that I abandoned my land.

This is a mix of Kidd and Organica grass.

[Kascha Matova]

@Tiffy et al : Wow! Thanks for all the responses and the beautiful scenery! It's nice to know so many share my enthusiasm for creating breathtaking and realistic natural surroundings for their homes!

For those who guessed about the machine I was talking about, you were right. It is literally called LandMap and was purchased at the marketplace. It is a really easy to use tool that allows me to rez these little UFO looking scanners that in turn rez 4 beacons which can be repositioned and whatnot, and then used to scan the terrain within their boundaries and create a sculpt map(?) out of the data. The scanners can be drag-copied and they are supposed to link and share data when the boundaries are close enough between scanners. Then, I go to a website that allows me to import the map images into SL, where they are dropped onto the respective scanners and a sculpt texture is created, oriented and placed. I can then edit and specify a texture for each, link them, etc.

It works pretty well. I have two wide runs on either side of my property, plus a very narrow run at the water's edge, which I am trying to set up, and I was able to put down a grassy texture with that. I followed up by putting OneDom's MagicGrass over the top of it, and it looks beautiful. I'll follow up by using the sculpts I got in that big kit from Lilith Heart, which are absolutely beautiful, and set up rocks, trees, and flowered areas.

Since the runs on both sides are pretty similar, I just copied the prim I made with the machine to the other side. There, I will unlink the section closest to the water, sink the ground to extend the water inland, and then set up a wraparound dock so that on that side of the house I have a nice boat slip for one of my yachts that I will keep perma-rezzed as decoration.

The house itself is magnificent. It's the 2017 futuristic estate house that's on the marketplace. Fully furnished, taking up most of a 6144m plot, and yet only 300 prims and with all kinds of electronic goodies, and I got it for $350L! Perfect for doing my previous estate house from two years ago one better.

My grass is menu driven, and allows me to use sounds and change textures. Unfortunately, if I want to remove the scripts (since every instance has a script), I'd have to re-rezz if I want to change menu options. I don't think I can use one instance and then stretch it - something about megaprims reverting to 10m size if you change their dimensions, but I have to double-check.

I also visited RealWaves and got a beautiful off sim curved rock formation that shields the low-lying front of my house and my shallow beach from incoming breakers. So now waves crash on the sea side, but I get gentle flowing waves lapping up to my beach. And the seagull and ocean sounds make it all the more realistic.

Still not done though! More to do. I know this is a book and pictures would help so I'll post them here soon! :womanhappy:

[Tiffy Vella]

Beautiful!

[Tiffy Vella]

Ahh great!..I was just going to say "piccies, please"

Your tool does what I thought it might- scans and gives you a sculpt map of the terrain..and like Marianne said, thats a flat texturable surface, not a fluffy grassy one that you can walk through. I can see though that it might be handy for those of us on Mainland who can't edit our terrain textures, and could give us a nice option to throw our own terrian textures onto. I'm not a huge fan of the grey-ish grass I'm stuck with. I have a feeling that Sculpt Studio might have this option too, so I'll go look into it.  Your post has given me ideas.

(runs off to get all busy )

[Kascha Matova]

 

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Tiffy Vella wrote:

Ahh great!..I was just going to say "piccies, please"

Your tool does what I thought it might- scans and gives you a sculpt map of the terrain..and like Marianne said, thats a flat texturable surface, not a fluffy grassy one that you can walk through. I can see though that it might be handy for those of us on Mainland who can't edit our terrain textures, and could give us a nice option to throw our own terrian textures onto. I'm not a huge fan of the grey-ish grass I'm stuck with. I have a feeling that Sculpt Studio might have this option too, so I'll go look into it.  Your post has given me ideas.

(runs off to get all busy )

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Well actually, the creator claims that the LandMap scanners will follow whatever the lay of the land is, whether flat or bumpy. I imagine the true definition of bumpy is only as bumpy as the SL terrain tools can make the land, but it should definitely be able to follow hills and such. Anything that's going to allow relaying back xyz coordinates. So I wouldn't entirely count it out for more in-depth scanning.

It was $1500L, but if you go up tothe marketplace and look at the comments on it, you'll see why I took the chance. It's being hailed as a Godsend. Best of Show in this area. I didn't see even a single neutral comment, much less negative. The closest to one was somebody wishing he didn't have to go to the website for the maps and then import them into SL for $10L. But let's face it. No matter how you do sculpt maps outside SL, you're going to get them in the same way, just like any other image.

Glad I could inspire! I'll be looking forward to seeing your pics too! :womanwink:

[Tiffy Vella]

LOL some people are just cheap.

[Kascha Matova]

Here are some pics. They're hasty cause it's SleepyTyme right now, but you get the idea!

 

Here's the overhead of the place. I need to get rid of that crappy dayglo grass stuff in the courtyard - yuk! :

 

Here's the grass you can see on the left side of the overhead that I just put in. The trees too:

Here's the view of the ocean from my front facing second floor balcony:

And finally here's a view from my first floor beach chair at night with my lights on:

You like? I hoping you like a lot! I mean really likey likey! I'm not finished with it, but it's a great start I think! :womanwink:

[Tiffy Vella]

Nice design! What grass did you end up putting in there? Is it some Kidd?

 

[Kascha Matova]

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Tiffy Vella wrote:

Nice design! What grass did you end up putting in there? Is it some Kidd?

 

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Thanks! Loving how it's going so far.

The grass is on the marketplace and it's from OneDom

 

That's the link I left you up there btw. I'm heading back to them to get flowering grass too :matte-motes-grin: