Placing lots. Tips for perspective and terrain conformation by Roswin @ BMC
Rosewin wrote:
Her are a few tips to help with laying out buildings and gaining a perspective of how they will look in your world and also how to stop your lots from tearing.
Lot marking is very handy to help with perspective and layout, it also preserving lot edges while sculpting your land.
It's simple, all you need to do is use the terrain paint to mark out your lots.
For square lots simply choose the square terrain paint tool and the size of the lot, I used the 64x64 here.
For rectangle shaped lots, you can just place the lot first then paint under them, deleting the lot again when you are finished.
This will give you an idea of how the lot looks in the landscape and you can plan your layout better. Use the grid to help with placement also, and don't forget too, that you can change your grid direction, so not all your lots have to be square to each other.
One of the reasons for doing this is to prevent lot tearing. If you place all your lots then sculpt the terrain around them it can result in this.
By masking out the lots and placing them after you have sculpted the terrain it will prevent these tears. Another thing too, is that if you want to share a world and have others place their own lots, you want the lot to be flat to the landscape, by marking them you can see which areas you need to flatten.
Another way to line up a lot with terrain is to use the Conform Edges tool, although I have found that it does not always work for me, which is why I have suggested alternatives.
Here is another method of getting rid of lot tears. Here is an example of an extreme tear.
To snap the lot back to the terrain simply select the lot in the left hand panel, right click and delete. Then hit undo.
The lot will then return and be level with the ground.
And that is a few ways to wrestle your lots and terrain into submission. Happy world building. :thumbsu:/>
This tutorial is thanks to Richdre, Water_cat and Regina, who taught me these handy little tricks.