Simple terraforming question (wrong forum?)

[Sindy Lovelace]

I bought a nice house that happens to have a basement, and I can't figure out how to terraform the ground in nice straight blocks with vertical walls. I want to remove/lower the land to fit the basement without distorting the land that immediately touches the house. I keep having really ugly gaps because the edge of the basement digging is rounded (sloped?) badly.

Any idea how this is done? Or can it be done?

Edited November 3, 2021 by Giselle Kiyori

[Rolig Loon]

Sometimes you can do it very carefully if you start by lowering a spot in the center of your basement to the desired elevation and then move from that point outward. using the flattening tool on a low setting to make the floor of the entire basement the same elevation.  If you are really lucky, the walls will be nearly vertical and your distortions will not mess up the land beyond the house.  It's frustrating. You'll probably have to revert the land and try again several times. Even then, you should count on putting prim walls around the hole, just as you would if you had dug a cellar hole in RL.

[Sindy Lovelace]

Okay, thanks! I could always just use a single prim to raise most of the parcel land up 3m, then add a few more to form to basement cutout. Hmm. Weird that a simple block shape isn't easy to get made.

[Chris Corvinus]

1 minute ago, Giselle Kiyori said:

Weird that a simple block shape isn't easy to get made.

Its impossible to terraform with a block "shape".  It takes alot of time and patience to learn to terraform. You'll never get it perfect, thats why us landscapers simply cover up small holes and lumps after terraforming.

[TT120]

The edges will never be straight (90 degrees) but you can get it close.  It there are gaps around the edges of the house, you can cover that with shrubs or other vegetation.

Sometimes I'll sink the build into the ground where I want it then terraform down until you cant see the ground poking through the walls and floor.

Edited November 3, 2021 by TT120

[Rolig Loon]

3 minutes ago, Giselle Kiyori said:

Weird that a simple block shape isn't easy to get made.

Not really.  The terraforming tools are designed to affect nearest neighbor vertices on the land as well as the vertices that the tools are directly applied to, so that changes in elevation are smooth by default.  If you make a tool very weak, you are reducing the number of nearby vertices that are affected, but even then the edges will try to blend as smoothly as they can. 

[diamond Marchant]

20 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

The terraforming tools are designed to affect nearest neighbor vertices

What she said.  Any terraforming is influenced by the surrounding terrain. You will find that is much easier to dig a square hole on a flat parcel than one with a hill next to where you want the hole to be.  Even in perfect conditions, the walls of the hole will never be absolutely vertical.

[Aethelwine]

You can hide any gap around edge of your house caused by not vertical edges with a hollowed out prim with a concrete texture on it. It shouldn't look out of place in the context of most houses, but you could try sand or grass or earth texture if that fits you context better.

[Lindal Kidd]

Some sort of border around the house will be needed, since the cellar walls won't be completely vertical. A walkway, some planters, a porch or a patio, or some combination.

I generally use TT120's method. Sink the home in the ground and then "dig out" the cellar with the terraforming tools.

Edited November 4, 2021 by Lindal Kidd

[Maitimo]

It will never be perfect but the closest you will get is to lower the basement area using a small selection area until you've got it about as deep as you need or a bit more. Then flatten the bottom, again using a very small but fairly strong tool - be careful to keep the whole selection tool (the dots) inside the basement area. Finally use Flatten again at ground level to even up the edges. Its easiest to do all this with the house in-situ.  However you will still almost certainly need to use prims to fill in gaps. 

There's another way to do it, if you have a premium alt or a trusted premium friend who is willing to temporarily donate  a little spare tier.  Split off the basement area into a separate parcel. (needs to be in multiples of 16 sq m.) Sell it to your alt. If the original parcel is group owned, this new little parcel must not be - it needs to have a different owner. Get your alt/friend to sink down the basement, they will be unable to affect the main parcel owned by you.  When they're done, buy it back and re-join to the main parcel

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

You think in SL a hole in the ground would be easy to dig! Many times the hole gets borked!

[Desiree Moonwinder]

You are getting good general advice.  Sometimes scripted tools help.  I use sim scraper by Scripter Coba for some applications.  

There are special cases where you can subdivide the land, "sell" it to your Alt, and have the alt sink the entire parcel then sell it back. 

Sometimes you can run a "smooth" on the whole parcel when you are done, and smooth the jaggies wholesale.  

If you are estate owner, or if the estate owner will cooperate, you can download the whole region as a terrain file and edit in in Blender or other tools.  However, this has side-effects for the 4 meters beyond SIM edge.  

Terraforming is an art. There are lots of special cases.