.RAW terrain

[Ravenna]

If someone could help me understand how to make a .RAW terrain file suitable for SL, I would appreciate it an awful lot. I can't seem to manage it on my own. Well acquainted with both Blender and Photoshop, but I just can't figure this out. I will reward you! BUT I need to have one on one, step by step tutoring.

I get the general idea, yet when I try to actually do it, doesn't work. How do I accomplish this ridiculous task?? Remember, reward! In L or USD. For tutoring that will get me fully ready to start cooking.

If you want to teach me for free, well, I guess I don't mind that lol. If you know a good tutorial, please point me at it.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Well first of all you need to understand how the terrain file works, and what's in it. This is documented here: Tips for Creating Heightfields and Details on Terrain RAW Files

Since SL uses some quirks the best way to create a terrain file is to use a tool dedicated to that task.

 

[Erich Templar]

I used to use this: Download L3DT Standard Edition

It's been a while, though, so I don't know if there are settings specific to SecondLife (it has an export for RAW files).

 

[Ravenna]

Well first of all you need to understand how the terrain file works, and what's in it. This is documented here: Tips for Creating Heightfields and Details on Terrain RAW Files

Since SL uses some quirks the best way to create a terrain file is to use a tool dedicated to that task.

I have picked through that document real thorough and I understand the concept. It's the technical fiddly bits I need help with. The quirks, in fact. How do I get from concept to terrain in SL?

 

[Chin Rey]

I get the general idea, yet when I try to actually do it, doesn't work. How do I accomplish this ridiculous task?? Remember, reward! In L or USD. For tutoring that will get me fully ready to start cooking.

If you want to teach me for free, well, I guess I don't mind that lol. If you know a good tutorial, please point me at it.

I don't think my method will work for most people so I'll give you the outline for free. ;-)

There is actually only one problem with the SL terrain format and that is that it's a unique and weird one that is only supported by Scond Life and Opensim. But opensim also supports a wide variety of other heightmap and terrain file formats so I use it to convert.

Well acquainted with both Blender...

Oh, mesh terrain, that's another headache and an even bigger one. There is a trick to do it in Blender but it's horrendously complicated and it will not give an exact copy of the mesh, only a rough approximation. There are some old apps that are supposed to do the job but I've never got them to work properly.

If you're going to work on terrain, I strongly recommend you do it with a proper terrain editor program. Take a look at L3DT: Download L3DT Standard Edition
It's old and not supported anymore but it's free, quite user friendly for a terrain editor and it has all the functions you need to make a terrain suitable for SL.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

I have picked through that document real thorough and I understand the concept. It's the technical fiddly bits I need help with. The quirks, in fact. How do I get from concept to terrain in SL?

As I wrote the best way is to use a dedicated tool for the map generation as starting point, just like the one Erich Templar and Chin Rey recommended .

 

[Ravenna]

Thank you there's a whole lot of extremely tempting programs that seem to do exactly what I want to do... Except the really important part! so I have L3DT but I'm struggling to work with it.

I also may??? Have??? Messed something up in Photoshop, it refuses to export raw now or open raw files. It did it before, idkwtf.

My current plan is to push some terrain by hand, export it and have a look.