Land owners or members of groups with the Always Allow Edit Terrain ability assigned to their role can use the Edit Terrain tool to change the shape of land. Members in a role with this ability can edit terrain only on a parcel owned by their group.
Before you begin: environment considerations
What type of environment are you making?
Simplify the process of creating terrain by planning properly in advance. You can use simple prims to create a layout of your ideas, for example, or set up marker objects to make it easier to know how deep a divot might be, or how tall a hill should be made. In the image above, each colored section of the pole is 1 meter tall, making it easier to determine the right size for the new hill.
What are the slope extremes?
Steep slopes can have undesirable effects on terrain textures, depending on their complexity, contrast, and saturation. A texture might look great on subtle, rolling hills but terrible on more extreme slopes. Be aware that textures will "stretch" or "smear" on steep slopes, and more experimentation may be necessary to make them look good. Generally, gradual changes in elevation look best.
Are there adjacent regions?
Crossing region boundaries can be a tricky situation, so it's always best to develop adjacent regions in tandem. If you own adjacent regions, the job of matching texture sets is straight forward. However, if someone else owns a region adjacent to yours, it's a good idea to ask the owner for copies of the textures being used on it so you can match your land textures to theirs for a better blending of the land along the border.
Creating terrain shapes
The Edit Terrain tool allows you to create many different shapes for your land. These shapes are stored as RAW terrain textures, with different colors corresponding to different heights. Region owners can download and upload these terrain files directly to their region, updating the terrain's shape for the entire region at once. RAW terrain files can also be edited externally in some graphics programs. For more information about working with RAW terrain files, please see the Second Life Wiki.
The Edit Terrain tool
To access the Edit Terrain tool, right-click on your land and select Edit Terrain. This opens a tool with many different options for terraforming your land.
The Edit Terrain tool contains seven land edit options:
- Select Land - Use this option to select the land area you want to edit. Click and drag your mouse on the land. The selected area shows outlined in yellow. If you do not select part of your land, the tool defaults to the whole parcel area.
- Flatten - Makes the selected area flat.
- Raise - Raises the selected area.
- Lower - Lowers the selected area.
- Smooth - Smooths gradients to create a natural slope of the selected area.
- Roughen - This option gives the land bumps and ditches.
- Revert - Undoes terraforming based on the terrain's baked shape, or baseline terrain elevation. Several clicks may be necessary to return land to its original shape.
These Bulldozer sliders allow you to adjust the size and strength of your edit tool.
- Size - Adjust the slider to determine the size of the area affected by your bulldozer Choose the size of your land edit tool.
- Strength - Adjust the slider to determine how subtly or radically the landscape is transformed.
- Apply - Use this button to apply your edit option to the whole selected area.
Show land owners
Select World > Show > Land Owners to color code the land according to who owns it:
- Reddish brown is land owned by others.
- Green is your land.
- Aqua is land owned by a group of which you are a member.
- Grey is public land (rare).
- Purple is land in the auction system.
Buy Land
The Edit Terrain tool provides the option to purchase land set for sale. Click this button to open the land purchase confirmation Window. The confirmation window provides information about any tier changes that might be incurred by making this land purchase. For more information about finding land to purchase, see Buying land.
Abandon Land
Land which is abandoned in a mainland region immediately reverts ownership to Governor Linden; land that is abandoned on a private region reverts to the region owner. Please use caution with this option; you will not receive compensation or payment in Linden dollars for abandoning land, and abandoning land is permanent. It may not be possible to recover land once you've abandoned it.
If you've abandoned a parcel of mainland by mistake, and it's now showing as owned by Governor Linden, please contact our Support team for further assistance.
Subdivide
You may want to break a parcel of land into multiple pieces, for example if you want to sell part of it. Select the section of your land by pressing down the left mouse button and dragging to create a yellow selection rectangle around the land you want to subdivide. Then click the Subdivide button. This will create a new parcel.
The new parcel will share the name and traits of the parcel it was separated from by default, like the parcel's name, object settings, and media streams. To edit the new parcel's information, you can enter the parcel's boundaries and click World > About Land to open the land information window for the new parcel.
Join
If you want to connect two or more pieces of land that you own, drag a rectangle that overlaps each of the land parcels you want to join and click the Join button to combine them into one. You can now use the About Land tool to set the features for this new piece of land.
Note: Land parcels cannot be joined across region boundaries.
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