Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
sign iles that start with “Wheely_island_sign..., and apply one of the lettered textures to the face of the box
element, and the wood plank texture to the back face of the box. Keep the default plywood texture on the
cylinders and darken the underlying material color to weather the look a bit.
5.8.1 C onsider The V ieWer
With a few changes to the textures on a simple three-prim build, as shown in Figure 5.15, you can make an
accessible sign it into the overall look of the hiking trail. Your new sign should read “Welcome to Wheely
Island” or “Caution! Volcano. May erupt without notice.” Using the content for this chapter, you can take the .jpg
iles provided for the signage, and save them as templates for other signs on the island. Included are: Wheely_
island_sign_back.jpg, Wheely_island_sign_front_arrow_l.jpg, Wheely_island_sign_front_arrow_r.jpg, and
Wheely_island_sign_front_caution.jpg.
As you make signage, think about the “readability” of the sign and make sure you have created lettering
that is large and clear enough to be read easily. Look at the visual contrast and ask yourself if you can see
the edges of the letters clearly in all kinds of light. Go into the Sun Position menu and try looking at the
sign during all times of day. If it is hard to read at night, try making the sign face prim into a light source or
changing the glow brightness on that face of the prim in the Texture menu.
5.9 PLANTING TREES AND OTHER LANDSCAPING ON WHEELY ISLAND
By now, you are becoming pretty conident with terrain and how to manipulate it; so it is probably time to
start landscaping your terrain. Again, there are several choices depending on what world you are working in.
In Second Life, the default library folder in your inventory under Objects/Trees, plants and grasses, contains
some plants and trees with which you can landscape Wheely Island. This gives the new builder a quick-and-
easy way to add low-impact landscaping to the terrain, and it is always there if you need it. You can then
“plant” them from your inventory into your landscape by dragging them onto the land. If you are working
in OpenSim, there are other options.
5.10 MAKING YOUR OWN TREES FOR LANDSCAPING
If you are working in OpenSim, there are many options in the Metaverse for getting and making trees. The
main things to consider are your time and money budget for landscaping the build, and your climate/aesthetic
look for the landscape elements. Try to estimate how may trees, shrubs etc, you will need to have for a vir-
tual environment in the planning stages, so you have an appropriate amount of time and money dedicated to
obtaining pre-built or making your own landscape content. In consideration of the climate/aesthetic, if you
have spent time making a South Paciic-based Wheely Island landscape terrain, placing a maple tree into
the scene is just going to undercut your visual coherence and your visitors' “sense of place.” Try to plan for
landscaping elements that will support the story of the landscape from the “ground up” as it were. Before
your head starts to hurt with the thought of making all that content, let's look at these options:
Option 1. Snappy tree (http://www.snappytree.com) is a wonderful free online tree generator that
exports its custom tree meshes as a COLLADA ile (.dae) that can be uploaded into your modeling
program or the virtual world for texturing. You can also use this in conjunction with CanTree (http://
arnaud.ile.nc/cantree/) another online tree generator, which makes excellent 2D images suitable for
branch textures. In fact, you can combine the tree base and branch planes of Snappy Tree with the
CanTree images and make an excellent composite tree.
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