The elevation of terrain in Second Life is determined by gray tones in the RED channel of a RAW file. Elevation is lowest at the blackest of colors (water being the lowest), with white tones as the highest elevations. This means that I have been spending the last several days in photoshop trying to create a gray-scaled image where each tone of gray corresponds to the actual elevation of El Cerrito. I started by using a screen capture of a terrain map of El Cerrito from Google Maps.
I was aware of certain geographical features that I needed to include that are unique to El Cerrito. One of these characteristics is that El Cerrito is isolated. In order to achieve this feeling of isolation in the SL sim, I wanted to use as much of the map as I could, even though a lot of it is just surrounding mesas of empty space. So, for the first attempt, I chose a fairly large portion of the surrounding mesas and included both the ancon and the rincon, as well as another peninsula in the eastern bend of the river. I opened my screen capture of that section of the map in photoshop and began trying to shade the contour lines with accurate tones of gray. It soon became apparent that this was not going to be as easy as I had thought.
The first problem I had was that it was really hard to make out the contour lines on the map that I chose because they were so close together. The shades of gray were hard to differentiate on the computer screen, and I had no idea what I was doing.
I realized instantly that I had chosen too much map. The village and its buildings would never have fit into the tiny space that I had allotted. I had too much surrounding area. Also, my elevations were too exaggerated and everything was too steep, which did not look right in Second Life. I also immediately realized that the El Cerrito sim caused our educational neighbors problems as far as the view from their islands. One of our neighboring sims had set up a swing on the edge of their sim, where presumably, avatars could sit and enjoy a view of the ocean. After uploading my elevation terrain map, they were left with a view of a stark, unappealing block of texture because I had not thought to slope the mesas surrounding El Cerrito. I had not thought about taking neighboring sims into consideration, which is obviously something I need to do. So it was back to the drawing board.
I repeated the download/paint/upload procedure about a billion times, using different maps, different shades, etc. Each repetition of the procedure was a valuable learning experience. I learned that it is easier to start with a more simple map, upload that, and then use the terrain editing tools within Second Life to achieve more of the effect that I wanted in one small area, and then download the RAW file again to use as a guide to make overall changes in total elevation. So, download, paint, upload, edit and repeat.
So this morning I thought that I had gotten the best layout I could get, and plan on fine-tuning it as we go forward. But as I started building the schoolhouse in second life using the actual measurements of the real building, I realized that the village wouldn't realistically fit into the space that I had allotted for it. In other words, I still need to start off with less of the map to begin with to make room for the village.
The other thing I have discovered is this:
When working within the constraints of SL, you really have to give up on the idea that it will be an exact replica. And the more I thought about this, the less it bothered me. The SL El Cerrito will be recognizable to people who know the real El Cerrito, and it doesn't matter if it isn't exact as long as the important elements are included. For instance, in real life, the dam is a little over half a mile from the village. In SL it will be much closer.
Now off to work on my smaller map. :)
0 comments:
Post a Comment