VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzLkhNtkbMQ
Have you ever wished you could change your ground texture?
Ever spent hours or days trying to create land for a skybox?
Have you ever wished shadows didnt float stupidly in mid air?
Tired of having only 4 textures to choose from on your island?
Introducing JVTEK LandMap, a tool which can solve all these problems
and many more, quickly, easily, and without the need of admin powers!
(See the video link at the bottom of page to watch LandMap in action.)
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How It Works:
LandMap allows you to change your ground texture by using the power
of sculpted prims. LandMap scans the ground mesh and creates
sculpted prims which precisely cover the existing ground like a blanket.
This allows you to customize and change your ground texture at will.
You can add special effects like glow or shine to your ground.
You can even SCRIPT your ground or apply a media texture to it.
The best part is NO ADMIN POWERS ARE NEEDED!
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Easy To Use:
LandMap has been designed from the ground up with ease of use in mind
as the #1 priority. You can change your ground texture in just a few
minutes because all of the sculpt making, prim rezing, prim positioning,
and prim texture aligning is done for you. You simply place and size
the scan areas where you want them, lock the scanners, upload the
sculpt images and drag them from your inventory onto the scanners.
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Selectively Change Ground Textures:
LandMap allows you to selectively customize your ground texture from
a 4x4 meter patch up to a whole sim. Any shape you can make with
parcel boundaries you can also create with LandMap. You are not
constrained to 4 textures per sim, nor are you constrained to elevation
changes like with standard island ground textures. This makes LandMap
ideal for both renters and sim owners alike. Want a little snow or dirt
somewhere but not over the whole sim? No problem! Want to customize
your 512m parcel? You can do all of this easily with this powerful tool.
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Realistic shadows:
One of the great uses for LandMap is creating realistic shadows.
Have you ever bought a tree that has a tree shadow with it only to find
in dismay that the shadow is on a flat prim and floats in mid air because
your tree is on a hill? LandMap can solve this problem easily by creating
a custom sculptie which will bend the shadow to match the ground shape.
(Example of this is shown in the images section.) This same principle
can be used to create streams or paths that hug the contour of the ground
while using minimal prims. Combining alpha textures onto LandMap
sculpties opens even more possibilities for creativity and realism.
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Create Skybox Terrain:
Because LandMap copies existing ground into sculpt form you can use the
sculpted prims elsewhere such as in a skybox. This creates realistic
looking ground for skyboxes instead of the lumpy mashed together or 100%
flat ground most skyboxes have and can create a much more realistic effect.
Please note however that due to a technical limitation of SL, sculpted prims
should remain phantom and can not be walked on. If you would like to walk
on your skybox ground you can make a custom area to walk on under the
LandMapped prims out of invisible prims and maintain the smooth clean
and realistic look of the land. This does require more prims, however.
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Advanced Custom Textures:
Know your way around photoshop? LandMap provides you the ability to
create custom textures and literally paint your land however you see fit.
You can create alpha textures or even animated textures for flowing
streams etc. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.
(No support will be given for of Photoshop or custom texture creation.)
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Prim Requirements:
For Setup: 1 Prim + (7 Prims Per Scanner Used)
A mininum of 8 prims is required for setup.
Prim count will vary based on number of scanners used.
One prim per scanner used remains when finished.
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Notes On Sculpted Prims:
Each scanner creates one UNIQUE full perm sculpted prim to upload.
You are responsible for the upload fee on sculpted prims. ($10L Per Prim)
For example, if you use 4 scanners, it will cost you $40L to upload the 4 sculpties.
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Other Notes:
To achieve the best looking results it is recomended to have terraform power on your land.
While this is not needed to use landmap it helps greatly to fix minor problem areas.
LandMap uses prims to cover your land, if you use a very low draw distance
you may not be able to see all of your ground cover at once.
LandMap can cause minor issues with the rezzing of objects on scupted prims.
Objects can be rezed off the LandMapped areas, then moved onto them and used normally.
- Easily change your ground texture. - NO ADMIN POWERS NEEDED!
- Selectively re-texture your land as small as 4x4m to a whole sim.
- Copy existing terrain for use as landscaping in sky boxes or elsewhere.
- Map areas below trees to make tree shadows follow ground contours.
- EASY TO USE! - Builds, positions and texture aligns sculpties for you.
while it is not perfect, it is now a standard tool for my building. There is a bit of a learning curve, and some tricks need to be applied, such as NOT taking terrain to the minimum height before using this. Definitely leave room for land adjustment.
That said, my only complaint is that it would be nice to have reports on marker positions. Having that would make it much easier covering large and/or complex areas.
Definitely worth the price!
I found this very simple to use and was initially very pleased with the results. The sculpt followed the land contours very precisely and it was easy to apply the sculpt map and retexture the prim.
The downside I noticed was that if there was a high contrast between the new ground cover and the Linden ground, the Linden ground showed through when I zoomed way out. I put that down to a Linden problem, rather than a problem with the process, but it's worth knowing about. This would probably show less if you use a texture with less contrast (say, flowers or autumn leaves over grass) rather than high contrast with full coverage like the snow texture I used over grass. (I could also have hidden some of the problem areas with prims, come to think of it.)
All in all, I'm well pleased with this product. It allows me to do something in SL that I could not previously, and it works as advertised, consistently and well.
Five stars and a round of applause. Thanks for making this, Jathra.
This thing is pretty danged nifty, and is not only useful to people who don't own the sims they live on. It is also useful to sim owners who do not want to be constrained to the four ground textures they can put on their sims.
For example. an area of our sim has a spooky abandoned house, which is at the same elevation as a lot of other stuff that needs a cheery grass texture. With the standard SL tools, I can either convert that cheery grass texture to a non-cheery texture sim-wide, or I can just put up with a cheery grass texture around the abandoned house.
With this, however, I can selectively texture the ground wherever I want.
This tool is easy to use, and works just the way the videos say. So within minutes, I was able to give my abandoned house an appropriate ground texture.
As to the people who say it leaves gaps, yes, it does, if you are sloppy about it. You wouldn't expect to put one of the scanners in the SW corner of the sim, and another in the NE corner, and have it cover the whole thing, would you? Well, the same applies to not getting them aligned and butted together properly when they are relatively close together. It takes a bit of care, but if you use it properly, it works perfectly.
I think the fact that the sculpts don't absolutely perfectly match the terrain is a feature, not a caveat. Makes it look more natural, without a linear demarcation between the places you have the prims, and the places you do not.
If you need something like this, and are waffling about it, buy it. It does what it says it will do, and your land will look better.
Oh, and one thing I was wondering about when I bought it. I was a little concerned that I would have a bunch of 10m square cubes all over my land making up the new terrain. However, this apparently uses 32m square megas. Which is dandy by me. If you are still afraid of megas, forget about this, and get a horse or two, and make your sim into pasture land. :P
But if you want a low prim way of changing your ground textures wherever you want, buy this.
I absolutely LOVE this tool! I rent a small 512m parcel which is a beach. I love the forests so I really wanted to make myself feel more at home...this tool allowed me to do just that.
Quick and easy set-up!
Simple to create your sculpted land maps!
Even easier to apply them!
Easy to fix any inconsistencies!
I really can't praise this item enough. Not only can I have my forest, but I can celebrate the seasons as well! I have season change trees as well, so it will be fun to play around with the land! Ty for a great product! Definitely recommend!