Create basement?

[Elspethian Kalinakov]

I picked up a great little cottage but it has a basement. A reviewer mentioned that you have to create one first - or dig one first?

[Toothless Draegonne]

Assuming you have terraform rights on your parcel, you can push the land down and pull it up using the terraform tools. Or, place the house and use land-form objects to build up. Be aware that Linden Water may get in the way if you terraform down too far. You may end up using land-forms anyway if terraforming is too limited or fiddly to get it looking right. Terraforming may also be limited or disabled depending on where you are.

If you do use land-forms, I'd suggest you look at surrounding parcels, and use land-forms from the same creators. It's not just about maintaining a common theme, but it also keeps a common texture-set, so less on your (and everyone else's) GPU to deal with.

[Alwin Alcott]

4 minutes ago, Toothless Draegonne said:

If you do use land-forms, I'd suggest you look at surrounding parcels, and use land-forms from the same creators. It's not just about maintaining a common theme, but it also keeps a common texture-set, so less on your (and everyone else's) GPU to deal with.

thats only needed when people live in a dedicated themed region or private estate with covenants.
At mainland you'r totally free how to decorate/terraform/landscape your land how the user likes it.
It can certainly be a nicer view to use the same, but not needed, very rarely seen it.

[Toothless Draegonne]

1 hour ago, Alwin Alcott said:

thats only needed when people live in a dedicated themed region or private estate with covenants.
At mainland you'r totally free how to decorate/terraform/landscape your land how the user likes it.
It can certainly be a nicer view to use the same, but not needed, very rarely seen it.

Oh it's certainly not required. But, it does lessen impact on the amount of texture assets that everyone needs to load. It's a suggestion, not a command.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

Digging a basement is rarely satisfactory. Its much easier to rezz several prims at the height you want the finished ground level to be, blend it into the land  on the uphill side if you are on a slope and build a retaining wall on the down hill side. Plus landscaping on a prim is so much simpler for rezzing shadows and such.

If the ground texture you choose for your lawn is richer and more lush that the LL ground, you can rezz a few lawn sprinklers to explain why your grass looks so much better than your neighbors.

Oh, if having to rezz more than one ground texture causes a computer to lag and struggle, its time for a new computer.

pictured is my 32 m by 32 m park area, with a low retaining wall and built entirely on a prim.

 

Edited September 7, 2020 by BilliJo Aldrin
added picture

[Prokofy Neva]

On 9/6/2020 at 9:40 PM, Elspethian Kalinakov said:

I picked up a great little cottage but it has a basement. A reviewer mentioned that you have to create one first - or dig one first?

The problem is that mainland terraforming only goes up and down about 4+/- on most sims. Some of them have hills and you can do a lot more digging. But your basement just may not fit.

There's a house sold with a basement I would like to get, but after fiddling with the dimensions, I can't see where it will fit except my one exceptional sim with 40+/- (a very few old Mainland sims have this).

You would think a hill might work as it looks hollow underneath. Except when you try to push a build down into that space AND then try to sit down in it and put furniture in it, oops, it won't let you.

In any event, depending on your dimensions, on Mainland you will have to dig and see what you get on that particular sim. It may not work. Then you might have to put a foundation with a hollow in the middle as a way to create a "basement".

[Elspethian Kalinakov]

On 9/8/2020 at 11:15 AM, Prokofy Neva said:

The problem is that mainland terraforming only goes up and down about 4+/- on most sims. Some of them have hills and you can do a lot more digging. But your basement just may not fit.

There's a house sold with a basement I would like to get, but after fiddling with the dimensions, I can't see where it will fit except my one exceptional sim with 40+/- (a very few old Mainland sims have this).

You would think a hill might work as it looks hollow underneath. Except when you try to push a build down into that space AND then try to sit down in it and put furniture in it, oops, it won't let you.

In any event, depending on your dimensions, on Mainland you will have to dig and see what you get on that particular sim. It may not work. Then you might have to put a foundation with a hollow in the middle as a way to create a "basement".

Would that be the Cozy Olive Cottage? That's exactly the one I'm trying to figure out. So I'm going to copy your experience to my list of things to try.

[Elspethian Kalinakov]

On 9/7/2020 at 8:37 AM, BilliJo Aldrin said:

Digging a basement is rarely satisfactory. Its much easier to rezz several prims at the height you want the finished ground level to be, blend it into the land  on the uphill side if you are on a slope and build a retaining wall on the down hill side. Plus landscaping on a prim is so much simpler for rezzing shadows and such.

If the ground texture you choose for your lawn is richer and more lush that the LL ground, you can rezz a few lawn sprinklers to explain why your grass looks so much better than your neighbors.

Oh, if having to rezz more than one ground texture causes a computer to lag and struggle, its time for a new computer.

pictured is my 32 m by 32 m park area, with a low retaining wall and built entirely on a prim.

 

When I get my own land - a friend has load me a patch for the moment - do you know anyone who can walk me through rezzing? I think I've figured out how to raise and lower land . . .

More seriously, a copious spare time project is to see about putting together a mentors guild. But for now you've made me think of rezzing, another suggested land forms that work with those nearby, and between the two the light went off: I know the person nearby and would like my land to flow from hers.

[Marianne Little]

On 9/9/2020 at 11:38 PM, Elspethian Kalinakov said:

When I get my own land - a friend has load me a patch for the moment - do you know anyone who can walk me through rezzing? I think I've figured out how to raise and lower land . . .

More seriously, a copious spare time project is to see about putting together a mentors guild. But for now you've made me think of rezzing, another suggested land forms that work with those nearby, and between the two the light went off: I know the person nearby and would like my land to flow from hers.

If you pull something out from your inventory to the ground, you have rezzed it.

I assume your friend gave you rights to rez, build and terraform, yes?

The Cozy Olive cottage is square, 14 m x 14 m. This makes it super easy to make a "filler" so you do not have to painstakingly make a 14 x 14 m hole with straight walls up.

One of the reviews says this:

"An unwanted sunken ditch around the cottage can be patched with a 76% holed 18x18 box. If you cannot do them, ask for your pro friend's hand."

This filler can you texture with default LL ground texture, like "base grass" or other texture. You can have a wood deck texture instead, or what ever you want. This takes up only one land impact, is solid to walk on and a perfect surface to rez on.

You just click the ground, choose build and click again. You make a cube, and can now click on it for edit. Set it to 18 x 18 and hollow 76% as suggested. You can easy make it bigger, but then you have to take down the hollow%.

These tutorials are super basic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX6gvol-zIU&list=PL1EC105959AE91EE9&index=1

 

 

[Elspethian Kalinakov]

On 9/11/2020 at 11:27 AM, Marianne Little said:

If you pull something out from your inventory to the ground, you have rezzed it.

I assume your friend gave you rights to rez, build and terraform, yes?

The Cozy Olive cottage is square, 14 m x 14 m. This makes it super easy to make a "filler" so you do not have to painstakingly make a 14 x 14 m hole with straight walls up.

One of the reviews says this:

"An unwanted sunken ditch around the cottage can be patched with a 76% holed 18x18 box. If you cannot do them, ask for your pro friend's hand."

This filler can you texture with default LL ground texture, like "base grass" or other texture. You can have a wood deck texture instead, or what ever you want. This takes up only one land impact, is solid to walk on and a perfect surface to rez on.

You just click the ground, choose build and click again. You make a cube, and can now click on it for edit. Set it to 18 x 18 and hollow 76% as suggested. You can easy make it bigger, but then you have to take down the hollow%.

These tutorials are super basic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX6gvol-zIU&list=PL1EC105959AE91EE9&index=1

Thank you for writing it all out! Once people started telling me how to dig a basement, and now trying to rez some things, I've picked up on the fact that my friend loaned me some land, not gave me some of my own.

So, with many thanks to all - and yes, I have copied everything out into a document! - my next job is buying some abandoned land I've found. Y'all have me thinking I'd like to live in a neighborhood but I've fallen in love with some of the houses I've found.

Which doesn't mean I won't show up here again with a stupid question but, as someone pointed out last time, that's supposed to be available on some of the 'help' islands.

On 9/11/2020 at 11:27 AM, Marianne Little said:

 

 

 

[Marianne Little]

45 minutes ago, Elspethian Kalinakov said:

Which doesn't mean I won't show up here again with a stupid question but, as someone pointed out last time, that's supposed to be available on some of the 'help' islands.

You do not ask stupid questions, so just come back with more! 😘

[Rabid Cheetah]

While you can't terraform the land, you could get a neighborhood feel if you buy a premium account and get a Linden home.  If you opt for a Victorian or Traditional style Linden Home, a 14 by 14 might fit in the backyard as an extra building -- though you'll need to make sure the top of the roof isn't more than 15 meters above ground level.  You might be able to fit it on a Camper lot if you pick the smallest camper, but I don't know for certain.  So now I gotta go login just to rez some 14 by 14 prims lol

[julieare]

If you still need help with this , I be happy to come over and help you out. 

[Pussycat Catnap]

My neighbor has an example of a great basement on his plot that neighbors me on Zindra mainland. Of course our region allows you to go +/- somewhere above 40m.

That said - he was able to use mesh prims that he textured to match the local ground to great effect.

My own attempt to do the same thing on my plot a year or two ago... looked like an absolute mess.

At various points in time many of the neighbors have had underground builds there.

The neighbor on the other side of me also hase a deep basement, but did it with a simple prim raised above the ground and textured in a brick texture - it doesn't look that good. Her build is more prims almost no mesh, and very little sculpties. Been waiting for that person to get an updated building for years...

 

On regular mainland you can get about 8m clearance - raise the land around, lower a cutout. It seems to go smoother if you divide up your parcel a bit first... slice away the part you want to dig. Give it to a different group. Make sure that whatever alt does the land digging ONLY has permission to dig on the new cut parcel but cannot do anything on the remaining land - lacking perms there. That seems to force the system to not 'extend' your cut too extensively and not mess up the "neighbor" (which is actually you) too much... Otherwise, I find digging basements tends to make radically weird spikes in the land around it...

- you can rejoin the parcels after you've finished the land edit.

 

Once you do it all find some mesh prims that can make a smooth hill - preferably with a cut in them somewhere that is either a clean shape (a cut hole or square), or by positioning them around your building at least leaves nothing exposed.

Then just assign the same texture to those prims as the mainland ground around them.

Put some plants or rocks in spots with odd angles.

Done well enough you can keep it to almost the same height as the land around it.

Edited September 16, 2020 by Pussycat Catnap

[Marianne Little]

I have to mention that @Pussycat Catnapis right about landscaping unless the Mainland shape is formed by LL so it will not let itself be pushed down. I have this problem. It is a challenge and something I can not see before purchase.

I have a long plot, roughly three 1024 m in a line. One of the corners is not going down an inch. I even had the owner of the plot behind trying to terraform his part of the corner down, no such luck.

I can work with it in some way, but my intention was to terraform the land down so I did not block the sea view for the other house.

 

Edited September 17, 2020 by Marianne Little
changed a few words to clarify

[animats]

 I tried making an in-ground pool in the Builders Brewery terraforming sandbox. It can be done, but you need some deck around the pool to hide the fact that you can't make vertical land, only a steep slope. You could make a large house with a smaller basement and just set it in a suitably sized hole.

Got chewed out for this. Builders Brewery doesn't want you to build in the terraforming sandbox. Just practice terraforming. So don't test out your basement design there.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

4 hours ago, animats said:

 I tried making an in-ground pool in the Builders Brewery terraforming sandbox. It can be done, but you need some deck around the pool to hide the fact that you can't make vertical land, only a steep slope. You could make a large house with a smaller basement and just set it in a suitably sized hole.

Got chewed out for this. Builders Brewery doesn't want you to build in the terraforming sandbox. Just practice terraforming. So don't test out your basement design there.

ooo theres a place you can terraform for fun? I love to terraform. 😁